Budget Scotland by Simon Heptinstall
Featured Hotel in Glasgow
Hotel du Vin One Devonshire Gardens
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There’s more to Scotland than haggis, kilts and mountains, as any recent visitor will tell you. Today’s Scotland is a vibrant, exciting place with brilliant city breaks to rival any in Europe and some of the continent’s most pristine unpolluted wildernesses to explore.
This ‘new’ Scotland has been helped by the resurgence of great cities like Glasgow - now one of the UK’s most cultural and entertaining places to visit. It’s a great destination for anyone who loves to browse shops, galleries, museums, bars, cafes, parks and restaurants.
If you’re going to the Comedy Festival or visiting Glasgow at any time there are a couple of great hotel bargains currently available. The comfortable, modern and stylish City Inn is a contemporary riverside design hotel with award-winning food, waterside terrace and iMac computers in every room.
Glasgow’s Malmaison, in a converted Greek Orthodox Church, is a luxury boutique hotel in the heart of the business district - an ideal location for visiting the city centre. There’s a disco, men’s’ and ladies’ hairdressers and an acclaimed French restaurant in the basement.
Across in Edinburgh visitors have regularly voted it one of the UK’s top cities for a holiday. There’s a world-famous Festival, a romantic castle and more history, culture, shopping and food than you could discover in a whole lifetime. Yet even here there are tempting hotel offers at the moment.
Channings Edwardian-style boutique townhouse hotel has views across the city or into its own private gardens. Each room is decorated with sumptuous fabrics, a rich colour scheme and even has its own jukebox.
Bonham’s is an intimate design hotel in Edinburgh’s classy West End; that gets you a stay in one of the Scottish capital’s coolest and most fashionable addresses, where you can enjoy fabulous French cuisine amid the chic contemporary décor.
Scotland away from Glasgow and Edinburgh used to be famously barren of stylish hotels and decent restaurants. That has changed completely now - there seems to be a gastro pub in every Highland village and boutique hotels have spread as far at the Outer Hebrides.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Dundee visitors can find rooms at the slick new modern Apex City Quay Hotel and Spa at very reasonable prices. And you’ll be staying at the heart of the latest waterside development surrounded by lively restaurants, shops and bars. You may struggle to leave the hotel - it has an acclaimed spa, gym and sauna plus an award-winning formal restaurant and an international brasserie.
And you can even find reasonable prices at some of those great country house hotels around the Highlands. The famous Pool House Hotel on the shores of Loch Ewe is often judged one of Britain’s most romantic spots. Far out on the west coast, it’s a family-owned antique-packed treasure trove, more like a stately home than a luxury hotel.