Your hotel appears to be closed...

The Inn on the Mile is named for its prime location on "The Royal Mile", which is a main drag in the tourist area of Edinburgh. The Inn sits at the intersection of The Royal Mile and North/South Bridge. North and South Bridge are in fact bridges. There is a fascinating history in Edinburgh related to going vertical to accommodate a growing population in a limited footprint.

We used the Inn as our base for trips to Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh Castle, The Camera Obscura (the one place to go in Edinburgh if you have limited time there), a ghost tour below South Bridge, and a search for a harp collection at the University of Edinburgh.

As I related in my trip summary, the first hiccup on our trip to Scotland was rolling up to location of "The Bank" hotel and seeing that the first floor windows were covered in newspaper. Our cab driver said something to the effect of "Your hotel appears to be closed".

So why the name change and newspaper on the windows? It appears that there was a recent (like, that day I think...) change in ownership, accompanied by a remodeling of the pub on the ground floor. During remodeling of the pub, the windows were covered in newspaper, I'm guessing to stir up a sense of intrigue about what was going on in there.

Once they got the pub up and running they had an "invited guests" grand opening. Since we were staying at the Inn, we were among the invited. Free beer, free hors d'oeuvres, and a prime seat on their patio where we got to watch it all go by. Actually, I gave up my prime seat in favor of standing on the patio watching it all go by. Edinburgh attracts a remarkable cross section of humanity and it seems that they all go through that intersection.

They didn't know how their room access key management system worked, and kept resetting old keys as they issued new ones. I'm glad the system behaved like that -- it reduces the odds of someone who stayed in the room previously having access to my room, but it led to multiple trips down to the pub to get new keys. Solution: Get all your keys done at once!

They also didn't have the pub on the ground floor up and running on our first two mornings there, so breakfast was an iffy proposition every morning. It started with a continental breakfast delivery to our room on the first day, no breakfast but a vague promise of a refund for breakfast purchased elsewhere ("just bring us the receipt") on the second day, and a smorgasbord breakfast in the pub on the third day.

We came back to The Inn on the Mile at the end of our trip and found that they had worked most of the kinks out of their system. I recommend the place for anyone who wants to be right in the heart of the action.

See my TripAdvisor review of the Inn On the Mile at http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g186525-d194007-r169511069-Th...