Edinburgh, James Court Apartments

We arrived at St James Apartments at 5.30 in the evening to find that the parking which we had been told was available was, in fact, a good 10 minutes walk away, costing £11 per day.

We were shown up to the very top apartment, called The Penthouse (what a joke!). It was situated up 97 spiral stone steps, although nowhere in the literature did it say that it was unsuitable for disabled people or children, or even anyone with a problem of climbing those steps WITH luggage!

The apartment had a lounge with 5 futons in it, and dreadful second hand furniture.The carpet in the flat was old, worn and filthy, and had not been vacuumed. The broken windows had been repaired with plastic bag which, in the wind, made an in incredible noise. There were no pictures on the walls anywhere. The bedroom had more second hand furniture, and a nasty musty bathroom off it, with revolting "crud" around the bath seal, and torn lino on the floor. There was one towel ring, but nowhere to dry other towels.

The kitchen had an old cooker which had not been cleaned and the foil under the rings was full of crumbs. Torn lino on the floor. The advertised "bowl of fruit" was a bowl of apples. Although there were fire hydrants outside the flat I dread to think what would have happened if there had been a fire.

I complained and was told that as I had only paid £100 per night, which was, in fact, the price I found on the internet, I did not warrant the beautiful flats which others had paid "over £200 per night" for. I replied that, as that was the price offered, that was what I paid, and I should have been treated exactly the same as other guests regardless of what was paid. I know for a fact that a Canadian who had been staying in one of the good apartments had only paid £120 per night. I was awarded a £30 refund and a day's parking, or I could have had a voucher for two nights stay. The manager said she would really like me to come back so that I could be treated like royalty in good accommodation. I replied I would have preferred to have been treated like that the first time around. We had just come from Gleneagles where it really IS luxury!

St James Court Apartments was basically a flat in a great location, 10 minutes walk from the main shopping street, (a real big hill between you and the main street, so maybe not for the old, disabled etc).

Was reasonably clean, (not to a good hotel standard, but pretty good). Breakfast supplies, e.g. cereal, milk, orange juice was provided. Fruit bowel and a selection of hot drink provided.

The room was decorated to a good standard, a little small, but we did have a lounge/kitchen and a bedroom so it was 2 rooms. Was a very relaxing place to stay as the room was not cluttered.

Excellent kitchen facilities, i.e microwave, cooker, fridge and pots and pans with washing up liquid and sponge provided.

Could hear people going up the winding staircase.

Toilet was slow at flushing (maybe partially blocked). Bathroom was only OK.

On the whole, we stayed in what I believe was some kind of historical building, in a great location. No real complaints. My room was maybe a little small for a family, but then there was only 2 of us.

I have stayed in several places in Edinburgh but none as nice as this, sure you have top hotels and good guest houses, but the convenience of the self catering aspect was brilliant. Excellent accommodation, no expense spared on its fixtures and fittings. I went with some girl friends and we had a damn good weekend. The place was clean and tidy and we had bread, milk, cereal and orange juice there waiting for us as well as fresh fruit, how thoughtful.

Beautiful historic surroundings and a nice little pub underneath, which did not make it noisy as we thought it may have. I slept like a baby.

We stayed at the Apartments for 10 nights, with our 13 week old baby. We stayed in two of the apartments as we were late booking. Both apartments were clean and had all amenities needed (plus extras like the DVD player, microwave, washing machine and breakfast foods and fruit provided). The apartments were also serviced regularly throughout our stay.

The apartments were spacious and comfortable, especially apartment number 1 which had a huge living room. It was lovely to stay in an old stone building on the Royal Mile that had a homely/comfortable feel to it. There was never a problem with lack of hot water or noise.

The staff were helpful and courteous at all times and even put our washed clothes through their drier, which was very helpful given all the baby clothes.

The apartments are very good value for money, especially given their location. After reading the first review, we were very concerned, especially as we were taking our baby. However, we are extremely glad that this did not put us off and are sure we will be back again next year.

Keep up the good work James Court.

NB we have given a 10 star rating for the food as, for a self catering apartment, we would not have expected any food and what was provided was very useful.

St James Court is a complex of many appartments so judging it as a whole is wrong. Individual people own the various apartments and I feel sorry for the people that ended up with bad owners. My own experience was that the apartment was exactly as descibed. It was nicely furnished, comfortable, swimming pool ets etc. If I have a complaint then it is that the coffee that was there wasn't nescafe origonal, other than that we had a great base to see edinburgh. I would recommend the appartment to anyone. I rate food as 10 stars becuase you are the cook or you choose the eating place of which there are loads

I liked it.....the St James' Court Apartments has character, is central, is clean, what more does anyone need in a self catering apartment. (although I think the word 'luxery' is stretching it a bit far

About a month later after spending my honeymoon in St James Court apartments I thought I'd vent my thoughts and feelings on this accommodation before I proceeded to take further action to ensure that tourists consider looking somewhere else.

I booked the accommodation from an online agent with a special discount package if we booked for 4 days. Normally the rooms can range from 100 pounds to 250 pounds a night. I was under the impression that I was booking somewhere really luxurious because if it's 'so called' pending 4 star rating. Another reason I booked it was it's great location. Sadly, the management of this establishment don't seem to know how to handle customers or run the place properly and appear to be running it into the ground.

Firstly, let me start off with the first of many problems that I found with the St James court apartment. After me and my wife had our wedding reception we had to head to Edinburgh in time to gain access to our room before 11pm and then be given our own set of keys. The person who guided us to our room only gave one set of instructions about the 'house rules' which was "don't put any clothing items on the heaters, it's a fire and safety thing" and then left us to our own devices. Of course, after such a long wedding day, me and my wife decided to retire to bed pretty early. We woke up next day only to find ourselves itching and then when we looked at the bed sheets we saw a layer of dust spread all across it. We decided to have a shower soon after to clean ourselves off from the dust mites. Unfortunately, the hot water cut off within 2 minutes and we kept on having to wait 30 minutes for another 2 minutes of hot water.

We immediately called up to complain about the lack of hot water and also the filthy bed. The response was not to our liking at all. The person on the other end of the phone didn't seem to care at all. In fact, he was more defensive and unsympathetic to our problem. He simply said he would call back in 2 hours to check if the hot water worked. With regards to the bed sheets, his excuse was that the room had recently been renovated and that it was to be expected that there would be some dust ? I replied angrily asking isn't common sense to replace the bed linen after renovation. The man simply argued back and continued on like it wasn't his problem so he didn't have to deal with it. He told us that it was our responsibility to look after the apartment ourselves since it was self catering.

During the remainder of our stay at the apartment we noticed a few other problems. Although the kitchen and bathroom were well stocked with supplies. There was nothing provided for washing the dishes but I guess that is acceptable in most self catering accommodation anyway but it would of been helpful to have scrubbing brushes etc supplied. We found that the apartment was covered in long brown strands of hair which couldn't belong to my wife since she has black hair. We found this very surprising after being told that we were the first and only guests staying there after the renovation. This also led us to wonder why the fruit bowl provided had rotting fruit on the underneath. Perhaps this was leftover from the last occupants they didn't have? Anyway, we could tell that the only renovation they did was a lick of paint around the walls and ceiling.

Another slight problem we had was the washing of clothes. The washing machine did not have a dryer and there was no drying racks of hanging wire in the apartment so we wondered how on earth we are expected to dry clothes. It's not a wonder that people have left clothes hanging over the heaters in the first place. This leads me to another point, the floors were wooden and in an old building this left the apartment very cold at night so it left the place far from comfortable. My wife, who is from a hot country had no choice but to bundle up under the dusty covers provided by St James Court apartments. We only managed to improve the sleeping arrangement when we pulled off a cover from one of the room's futons (which unfortunately was also pretty dirty and had toothpaste stains on it). Even the futons were pretty useless for sleeping on since they were collapsing and in desperate need of repair. I would hate to see how the room looked before their renovation as they call it.

The room was becoming increasingly dirty and dusty and we were thankful that we were not staying there for a week or two because it would of inevitably turned into a pig sty. There was no bucket and mop provided for the floors and no Hoover. Also, there was no bin liners provided for when we needed to empty the trash. Again, the trash was another problem and it was mounting up very high since we had been given no instructions on where to dump it. There was no obvious skip or any place outside in which to place it. Nobody called around our room on a daily basis to empty bins, replace toiletries or clean anything despite the fact that the accommodation was described as having a concierge and daily maid service. We eventually placed the trash bags in the hallway and thought that the obstruction would probably be cleared away soon. This turned out to be true enough. We actually noticed their linen room after seeing a pile of old scrappy moth covered sheets sitting by a window on one of the upper floors. Also, there was lots of junk wedged in behind hallway doors or against windows and we thought this could be a fire hazard.

In hindsight we wish we had just checked out sooner and gone somewhere decent even if it was going to cost us much more. Our attempts to get any compensation were futile as we got no reply back from either the hotel agent or the hotel management itself. They didn't even offer an apology. I think they expect that unruly and unwashed people stay in these apartments but it is not the medieval times. This was obvious from some of the neighbours we had both upstairs and downstairs. They constantly partied day and night and the noise levels barely died down. We heard bottles and glasses smash, furniture moving, people shouting and screaming, music turned up full blast and it sounded like they were doing the Riverdance on the wooden floors. We are now considering contacting the Scottish Tourist Board and the Environmental Health Services because of the skin irritations we both suffered for over a week after our stay there. We hope that St James Court Apartments never gets its 4th star because it certainly doesn't deserve it.