100 Princes Street

100 Princes Street

There is a view from the bay windows of The Wallace that makes the question of where to have dinner entirely redundant. Edinburgh Castle fills the entire frame across the valley, and on a clear evening with a glass of something from Ghillie's Pantry, where over a hundred Scottish whiskies are kept, the argument for staying exactly where you are becomes close to irresistible. This is the defining quality of 100 Princes Street: a hotel that gives you one of the best views in Scotland and then makes leaving it genuinely difficult. The building was the former headquarters of the Royal Overseas League, and the Red Carnation Hotels group, which opened it as a boutique hotel, has kept and deepened that particular atmosphere, a members' club for people who love Scotland and want it to surround them entirely. Thirty rooms and suites, each different, decorated with bespoke tartans, teal velvets, brass-studded leather, Georgian antiques, maps, globes, and chandeliers shaped like vintage hot-air balloons, the whole interior inspired by Scottish explorers who went further than most, among them Alexander Gordon Laing, Edinburgh-born and the first European to reach Timbuktu. Some rooms face Edinburgh Castle directly; others overlook the New Town. The Wallace restaurant and bar is reserved exclusively for resident guests, which gives the whole hotel the atmosphere of somewhere that belongs to you for the duration of your stay. The National Gallery is next door. The Royal Mile and the Old Town are minutes away on foot. Waverley Station is a ten-minute walk. Short version: Thirty individually designed rooms in the former Royal Overseas League building on Princes Street, with Edinburgh Castle filling the bay windows of the guests-only Wallace restaurant, over a hundred Scottish whiskies at Ghillie's Pantry, and the quiet confidence of a hotel that feels like a private members' club from the moment you arrive.