LEFTBANKED.

12.01.2019

727. Edinburgh in November | The Dunstane Houses Review

The Dunstane Houses is a luxury five-star boutique hotel in Edinburgh, set in a pair of Victorian houses across the road from each other in the city's West End. The stately Dunstane was built in 1852 and still retains many of its original features; open fireplaces, high corniced ceilings, a grand stone staircase. Traditional decor is seamlessly mixed with modern details, creating an opulent yet intimate retreat with style akin to a members-only club. As soon as you step in to the house, you are greeted with a sense of old-world splendour.

There are 35 rooms in total. Rooms are elegantly designed in a refined palette of navy blue, brown, coral, and cream. Our room was the "Dunstane Suite" which I believe is their largest/signature suite. It was very spacious and radiated coziness. We loved the peacock feather wallpaper and our favourite feature was the free-standing copper bathtub set in front of a bay window. The bathrooms have heated floors and towel racks.

The Dunstane Houses received the "Most Romantic Boutique Hotel of the Year" Award from the Scottish Hotel Awards 2019 and the previous year was named as the "Boutique Hotel of the Year"! The hotel is located on a fairly residential part of town. It's close to Haymarket Station and about a 15 minute walk into the old town. It is the perfect place to stay if you want an urban retreat, somewhere central yet not in the hustle and bustle of the city. We really loved our stay here and highly recommend it if you are visiting Edinburgh.

Gallery style artwork and photographs adorn the hallways, with vintage images and classic luxury car details.

The restaurant on site offers fine dining of Scottish and Orkney-inspired cuisine. Dishes were innovative and flavourful, and the service was impeccable. I loved the warm and cozy atmosphere in the dining room.

The beautiful breakfast area. I love the velvet furniture and navy blue walls.

Such a nice spot for breakfast (if it was warmer!)

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726. Edinburgh in November | Arrival, Victoria Street and Harry Potter

I can finally start on my vacation posts! So in this trip we were only visiting two different cities within two weeks: Edinburgh & La Coruna. It was my first time visiting Edinburgh and third time visiting La Coruna. If Scotland is to be counted as a separate country, I've now visited my 30th! (I've been to the UK in the past but just England) I really like the style of buildings and streets in the UK. Edinburgh is similar to London is some ways but it felt a lot smaller. The weather was pretty bad the entire time we were there (lots of rain and cold), but I still enjoyed it.

We flew from Toronto to London, where we were supposed to have a 4 hour layover for our flight to Edinburgh. However that didn't go as planned. We booked with WestJet and first they delayed our flight by 2 hours. Then another hour, then another hour..it was so frustrating. In total we were delayed 4 hours I believe, which meant we would not be catching our next flight. We ended up having to book a new one to leave a few hours later. I will file a claim with WestJet and hopefully we can get some compensation.

In-flight reading. We brought 3 books on the way there and 6 on the way back lol.

Thanks to the flight delay, we arrived in the evening so we decided to just stay at our hotel as there was no point exploring the city. We stayed at The Dunstane Houses which is a very nice and intimate boutique hotel housed in a 19th century house. This was my favourite feature of our suite - the beautiful vintage bathtub!

The dining room was so relaxing and cozy.

Dinner!

The bed was so cozy I had trouble getting up the next morning.

Morning drone flight. I will do a full review of our stay there in an upcoming post!

Walking into the Old Town

The street featured in most Instagram posts of Edinburgh - the famous Victoria Street.

The author of Harry Potter, JK Rowling, is from Edinburgh and wrote the books here. So this is considered the "birthplace of Harry Potter". There are Harry Potter tours that bring you around the cafes she sat at while writing the books, lots of Harry Potter fan shops, building that inspired Hogwarts, and this cemetery - Greyfriars Kirkyard. It's a very small place and located within the city. It was where JK Rowling walked around to get inspiration for many of the names used in the stories. By coincidence I just re-read the entire series a few months ago (I saw the movie playing one day at a bar and got inspired to read the books again lol) so it was a good time to visit, while it was all still fresh in my mind.

We got a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans to try. I've never had them before and I was surprised/impressed at just how realistic the flavours were. The worst ones I had were earthworm and rotten egg. It was sooo bad I almost spit it out but I was forced to finish it lol. At least I didn't get the vomit flavour one which I expect would be the worst (that went to my boyfriend heheh). I kind of liked the grass one.

There is a pub on every corner at least. We decided to have a traditional pub meal that night.

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725. Last Weeks in Toronto

Hello from Spain! We are currently in La Coruna as I make this post. In fact it's already the final day of our 2-week trip. We have a flight to London in a few hours then we will stay the night there. Tomorrow we go back to Toronto.
This trip was booked kind of last minute and it wasn't really planned. We spent a few days in Edinburgh first then came to La Coruna (my boyfriend's hometown) to visit his family and some other things he had to do here.

I'm pretty behind on my blog now. I will do the vacation posts once we get back to Toronto..but at least I managed to complete the main Peru posts before we left lol.

Here are the photos from the last couple weeks in Toronto before the trip.

Reading Sapiens, which I now finished! I really enjoyed the book.

A new Akira Back restaurant called DASHA. The cocktails were really good and nicely presented. The food was also delicious and tasted really authentic. However it is pricey for what it is, since Chinese food is generally really cheap at other places. For example the "har gow"/shrimp dumplings order was $14. At dim sum restaurants they are maybe ~$5.