My partner and I stayed at the ‘Grassmarket Gem’ for 3 nights and overall we had a lovely stay, Edinburgh is a great city and the flat was a good base for us.
However, there were a couple of things that should’ve been brought to our attention prior to check in. Firstly, the flat is not next to the fat pony wine bar as advertised, this bar no longer exists. Secondly, the flat doesn’t have a castle view as you may be led to believe by the pictures, the castle can be seen at the bottom of the street and round the corner. I do feel it’s been slightly falsely advertised with the photos.
Thirdly, when went to turn the TV on it wouldn’t work and after trying numerous things we eventually heard back from the host who told us that the TV was in fact broken and waiting for replacement. We didn’t actually intend on using the TV much as we would be out exploring the city and are quite happy to spend time together without the TV.. however I do feel that it would have been courteous of the host to inform us that it was broken prior to check in, mainly so that we didn’t waste our time trying to make it work. In the host’s defence she did offer to bring us a spare one round to use, but we declined, we would’ve just preferred honesty in the first place.
We had a couple of other issues during the stay, one being that the shower wasn’t draining properly, this is was resolved promptly. The other issue was we didn’t have any hot water in the kitchen or bathroom, so we couldn’t wash our hands thoroughly or wash the dishes properly, not ideal, particularly during a pandemic. We did inform the host and she offered to get a plumber round the following day, but we had plans and as we were on holiday we didn’t particularly want to have to deal with this. We decided to make do as we were only there for a couple of nights. I do appreciate that the host can’t be blamed for this issue, but inevitably it did impact on our stay.
Despite this we did have a lovely time, the flat itself is really nice and cosy, the addition of the gas fire is a real bonus and it made a great base for exploring the city.