Apex Waterloo Place Hotel

The UK’s Apex hotel group is carving out a niche for itself as a purveyor of what you could call sub-extravagant luxury. Certainly in London, and to a lesser extent in Edinburgh, there’s a great rush to cater to the stratospherically wealthy, devising ludicrously exclusive amenities and comically lavish accommodations, leaving mere mortals with fewer options all the time. Unto the breach goes Apex, whose Apex Waterloo Court, near Edinburgh’s Waverley station, is a fine illustration of the brand’s finely tuned posh-o-meter.

As a hotel it dates back to the nineteenth century, and its historic facade gives little hint of the vibrant colors and rich textures inside. A 2009 renovation has seen to it that the style is perfectly in keeping with contemporary British hotel modernism, brighter and more clean-lined than you might expect from so stately a Georgian establishment. The rooms are all quite up to date in functional terms as well, with 42-inch televisions and plentiful work space, and the bathrooms are suitably well-equipped, right down to the rubber duck, a trademark Apex gesture. City Doubles are efficient and not at all cramped, and by the time you get into the Deluxes, to say nothing of the suites, you’re in proper luxury-hotel territory, star ratings be damned.

A spa and fitness center round out the services, along with Elliot’s Restaurant and Bar, which serves local, seasonal Scottish brasserie fare, as well as an afternoon tea service which boasts the distinction of taking place at an address that Earl Grey himself visited back in 1834. Not an endorsement, exactly, but certainly not inauspicious either.