The Best Hotels in the United Kingdom: 2022 Readers’ Choice Awards

"Opened in 1881, Edinburgh’s oldest hotel comprises five Georgian townhouses built in the 18th century in the city’s somewhat-misleading-sounding New Town. Don’t expect the guest rooms to be stuffy or stuck in the past: The understated decor draws subtly on 19th-century Scottish landscape paintings, with a cool palette inspired by highland glens and mountain heathers and leather accents. The Printing Press Bar & Kitchen occupies the former home of Susan Ferrier, Scotland’s answer to Jane Austen, and you may need to ask your bowtied server to walk you through some of the very local dishes that make up the menu: cullen skink (smoked haddock soup), whipped Knockraich Farm crowdie (a soft cows’ milk cheese), rumbledethumps (a cabbage and potato side dish). From the hotel, you’re only a four-minute walk from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, where you can marvel at the mugs of some of the great Scots who have passed through these halls over the centuries, both before and during its time as a hotel, such as poet Robert Burns and author Sir Walter Scott." - Ramsay Short