Alva House

About

Alva House is a guesthouse on Alva Place in Abbeyhill, adults only and run for LGBT guests. It is a walk of a few minutes to the bars around Broughton Street and the Playhouse, and about the same in the other direction to Holyrood Park and the foot of the Royal Mile.

The house is Victorian and has been left that way, with stripped wooden floors and cast iron fireplaces, modern furniture set against them. Rooms go from a superior double with its own bathroom and a separate sofa area down to single rooms sharing a bathroom off the hallway. All of them have heating you control yourself, double glazing, a TV and a DVD player, and there is a library of discs to borrow from. Wifi reaches the whole house.

Breakfast is a continental buffet laid out in the kitchen: fruit, juice, cereals, breads and preserves, with tea and coffee left out. The kitchen is open to guests and people tend to end up talking in it, which appears to be the point of the arrangement. The house is non-smoking throughout.