11 Royal View Apartments

great location. Fully equipped, self catering apartment, exactly what you need to feel comfortable.

Great location as there is lots to see in Stirling (wonderful castle within walking distance--20 minutes) and good restaurants for meals. And within a one-hour driving distance, there is a very large number of interesting cities/towns such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, to visit as well as numerous museums, castles, palaces and manors. Scotland is so rich in history. And, if you wish to hike, Loch Lomond and Ben Lomond are also not far away and are situated in the Trossachs National Park. That is why we spent 5 days in Stirling. As to the apartment, it had lots of windows on three sides allowing for a pleasant cross breeze and lots of natural lighting.

The apartment building is a recent construction. However, the builders took short cuts. For instance, the front door handle to the building came off in my hand because of a loose or missing screw. To be fair, there are two exits and the one leading to the car park worked fine. Also, the linoleum floor at the front door was not laid well (it buckles) and so you have to push quite hard to open and shut the door. In the bathroom, the gyprock (?) covering the side of the bathtub is already wearing out at the top left corner and at the central base. I took pictures but they are not worthwhile uploading. These observations make me think the building won't age well. We also used the washing machine as we had already been 16 days on the road. No instructions came for how to use it and the drying cycle seemed not to work very well as the clothes came out somewhat damp. Our machines in North America are quite different. Fortunately, the owner sent us a drying rack the next day--there was none initially--and so this was a satisfactory solution. Another omission: there was no French press coffee maker, meaning we had to resort to drinking instant coffee. At the price we paid for the rental, this seemed to be a glaring omission. Finally, since we like to sleep in cool rooms, we left the window open at night. The trade-off, however, was that we could hear the din of the traffic from the main road some 150 metres away, starting as early as 5 a.m.

Extremely clean and well kept with great facilities, lovely touches like tea and coffee, and fantastic responsive host. Would definitely stay here again!