Rockville Hotel

If you like having breakfast watching curlews and oystercatchers chasing the tide as the sun rises, then this is where you should stay. The sea is right outside the windows, with no promenade in between, in a warm conservatory lit with fairylights against the darkness of a winter morning. If you have the constitution for it, you will find the beach is very popular for early morning swimming, no matter the weather. The place is very quiet. The local shops of Portobello are a ten minute walk away and reflect a quietly progressive, unpretentious community. They include, amongst others, a Greek pastry shop, an old fashioned yet very modern greengrocers, an independent bookshop, supermarkets, a tailors (Edinburgh is full of tailors). Edinburgh four miles away, but the hotel is served by very frequent buses. Not far from here, on my way into the city, I chanced upon Piershill Cemetery with the grave of The Great Lafayette, a prestigious magician of the golden age whose body was found after a theatre blaze and, in a final posthumous mystery, found again in the theatre two days later! Very close by can be found the astonishing monument of the Craigentinny Marbles with an equally mysterious history. Stay at the Rockville to refresh yourself with an altogether different experience to the bustling crowds of Edinburgh.