My travel mate and I have decided to stay in central Edinburgh next summer (in Sat, 7/27, out Wed, 7/31), and we're OK with the (similar as of Friday night) rates at these Premier Inns:
- City Centre York Place, 44 York Place, just west of Broughton Street. Has been recommended on this forum.
- City Centre Royal Mile, 33 E. Market St., east of South Bridge. New, I believe.
- City Centre Princes Street, 124 Princes St.. Farther west, toward Charlotte Street.
And our back-up, a bit farther south and I think not quite as conveniently located: - Central, 82 Lauriston Place. Website says "new rooms", so I guess renovated.
The best I can tell from the Premier Inn website (not impressed by its fuzziness), all have a/c (just in case) and all have rooms with a largish bed plus a "sofa bed", which seems to have a regular bed-style mattress I could sleep on. (I didn't know during my earlier stays at the Heathrow T4 PI that I would be sharing a room and sleeping on the day bed, so I didn't ever try sitting on it.) The website is really unclear about the bed situation at York Place, but it delivers results when I ask for a twin room.
Pictures suggest that the first three hotels have tubs (travel mate prefers that), but again, the website is not always clear about which features apply to the specific hotel vs. most of the PI hotels. All those issues aside (I'll be emailing to verify)...Or not, as it turns out. The website doesn't appear to provide any way to email a specific hotel.
Is there a difference among those hotels in terms of terrain (I know the city is hilly; trying to avoid unnecessary hill-climbing), noise level, etc.? I've read (perhaps here) that Rose Street gets a lot of bar traffic, and the Princes Street location looks as if it might be problematic for that reason. Travel mate is more noise-sensitive than I am, and I'm not fond of listening to drunks at 2 AM.
Is one of those location markedly more limited in the number of mid-priced restaurants within 3 blocks or so? We have different restaurant preferences, so I'm not specifying any type of place in particular; there's safety in numbers.
Travel mate (with somewhat iffy knees) will be focusing on the historical sights and major museums in central Glasgow. I believe her interests align quite well with Rick's guide book. She will use HO/HOs and city buses when they are helpful, but I don't want to make getting around harder for her than necessary.
Thank you for your input.