Destiny Scotland George IV Apartments

St Andrews is one of our favourite places, and we're there 4-6 times a year. After poor experiences at five-star hotels over the last few years, we now only stay with Number 1 Apartments. The apartments are lovely, in the best locations, and immaculately kept. Booking, checking in, and coming and going are all so easy. Dawid is fantastic to deal with. You can tell he's genuinely passionate about customer service. I can't speak highly enough of Dawid or the Apartments.

The view of the castle was absolutely stunning, such a treat to wake up to, and the apartment itself was beautiful. The location right in the city centre is unbeatable. It got a little noisy at times, but that's what you'd expect here. Jan, the apartment manager, deserves a special mention. He helped us with local information about the tram and nearby restaurants, and with our bags. Nothing was too much trouble, and his warm, helpful approach made the stay extra special. We had an amazing time at No.1 Apartments Edinburgh and would definitely stay again.

This really feels like an apartment, not a hotel room, and the location is great, just steps from the Royal Mile and handy for the castle, St. Giles, and one of the islander experiences. The castle view was exactly as promised, and I enjoyed seeing it every morning. There aren't any staff onsite, though, and you should pack light. There are steep walks and a spiral staircase to carry your bags up. Apartments one through three are on the first landing, with the rest on the next two; the higher the apartment number, the higher you'll climb. The apartments themselves are very nice. Ours had a full bath, washer/dryer, dishwasher, and enough cups and cutlery. There was also a fridge with a couple of bottles of water ready, plus a welcome basket of biscuits/cookies, coffee pods, and sugar. They offer a discount card for other local businesses owned by the same people. I was less keen on having to email a picture of my passport and a copy of the receipt to get the room code. The little guidebook in the living room helped, though it could have explained the shower/bath and dryer better. The windows are fixed open by about an inch. Under at least apartment one, there's a bar that gets loud in the evening, so I really recommend bringing earplugs. The local Boots didn't seem to have any. The washer cleaned my clothes very well, but I couldn't get them fully dry. There’s a drying rack in the closet; after two days of moving things around to catch the sun, they were only dryish.

We knew before booking there was no elevator for the luggage. The bed was very comfortable, and the location was amazing. We spent a week in the one-bedroom castle-view room. It gets extremely noisy outside on both sides of the apartment at night until about 2am, but earplugs took care of it.