The hotel gets 2 Stars, it was "OK but some disappointments".

Just returned from a three night stay with friends in Edinburgh. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay there but have to say that we were somewhat disappointed with the hotel. We stayed at the Holyrood Hotel arriving on Valentines day. We travelled from Edinburgh airport to Waverley Bridge by Airport shuttle bus. This worked extremely well. From there we get a taxi (£5) to the Holyrood Hotel. The hotel is at the bottom end of the Royal mile, close to Holyrood palace and the Scottish Parliament building. It's very convenient for these sites and because of the neighbourhood relatively quiet but we felt it was out of things in terms of walking distance to and from Princess Street (about 20 minutes walk each way).

There were many good things about the hotel. We arrived early about 9' ish and the staff allowed allowed us to check into the one room available at the time. The rooms that we had (209/211) were both clean and well appointed including hair dryer, iron and ironing board and tea and coffee making facilities. Throughout our stay the staff were all very pleasant and you get complimentary mineral water in your room (about which more later).

Now what I would call the 'disappointments'. Perhaps these are not all hugely significant in themselves but they just kept coming on! First and foremost the food. According to the web site it is an AA 4 star hotel with fine dining. I am sorry to say we saw little evidence of this. We stayed on a dinner, bed and breakfast basis for the three nights. Each night there were a choice of four starter courses and four mains and four desserts (cheese, lemon tart, ice cream or crème brûlée). On the three nights we ate there one of the mains was always a vegetarian dish (risotto), one was pan fried chicken, one was tuna, whilst another varied between beef or pork.

One night my wife asked if she could vary her choice of vegetables choosing the vegetables on option for the beef dish to have with the fish dish (it was mashed potatoes!). We were told that someone had already asked the same question that evening and had received an answer from the kitchen that they only had enough vegetables for the number of courses they had prepared. I could well believe this as each night the main courses we had looked as if they had been plated up some time before. The vegetables also were non too hot. One night we had a chicken roulade dish as an entrée. This seemed to have just come direct from the fridge, it was so cold. Whilst we were there they were advertising a promotion for Scottish venison which was taking place throughout January and February. When I asked about this on the morning of day 2, I was told that the hotel was very busy because of St Valentines day and that there would be no venison – and there was none for the three nights we were there. ( If I seem to be overly complaining about the food all I can say is that the quality was way way below that which we recently enjoyed staying at the Masons Arms in Branscombe – and that's a pub, not a 4 star hotel in a capital city operated by a major hotel chain).

At breakfast they seemed to have run out of bread rolls after day 1 and they had run out of Earl Grey tea by the third day. On one occasion they also got the order wrong for the cooked breakfast.

It was nice to see complimentary mineral water (one bottle of still and one sparkling) in the room fridge. I left a note asking for two still bottles but continued to get one of each. Yes I'm sure if I had asked at reception they would have changed it for me but it was yet another niggle.

Finally although the room was very comfortable, nice firm bed, the TV placement was a bit odd. It was an old style CRT TV placed at the bottom of the bed. So sitting in bed we lost the bottom half of the screen, hidden by the foot of the bed and also, strategically placed right next to the bathroom door I managed to walk into it each night on my early hours return from the bathroom.

On the Friday morning we were awaken earlyish (7:15) by bottle collection in the side lane outside our room.

Then on the Saturday night at about seven pm I tried to run a bath only to find that there was no hot water. I rang reception to query this. They agreed to phone back in 10 minutes which they did. Apparently the pressure had dropped but it should be OK in a quarter of an hour. There was still no hot water 45 minutes later. Reception explained that everyone had used the hot water at the same time so we needed to wait for the pressure to come up again. Not what you expect from a four star hotel.

Choice of wine was reasonable in the hotel although two glasses of wine in the bar set us back £10 (I suppose typical hotel prices) although there is an excellent bar next door to the hotel (the Tun) where we got two glasses of wine and two pints of beer for £11.40.

I can recommend a very nice and reasonable restaurant behind Jenners on Princess Street, I think its called Above (as in its above the pub). We had a very good lunch there on our final day.

As you read the above you may think these are insignificant, and probably one or two in isolation is what you experience in most hotels. Looking back I think the disappointment with the food certainly made me more aware of the other issues.

Our friends whom we went to the Roxburgh with had previously stayed at the McDonald Roxburgh Hotel in Edinburgh. They said that the Roxburgh had been much better for food and location.

Edinburgh itself was marvellous.