Aberdeen Hotels Accommodation - Hotels in Aberdeen Scotland
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About Aberdeen
The third-largest city in Scotland, ABERDEEN , commonly known as the Granite City, lies 120 miles northeast of Edinburgh, on the banks of the rivers Dee and Don smack in the middle of the northeast coast. Based around a working harbour, it's a place that people either love or hate. Certainly, while some extol the many tones and colours of Aberdeen's granite buildings, others see only uniform grey and find the city grim, cold and unwelcoming. The weather doesn't help: Aberdeen lies on a latitude north of Moscow and the cutting wind and driving rain (even if it does transform the buildings into sparkling silver) can be tiresome. Since the 1970s, oil has made Aberdeen a hugely wealthy and self-confident place: only four percent of Scotland's population live in the city, yet it has eight percent of the country's spending power. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, it can seem a soulless city; there's a feeling of corporate sterility and sometimes, despite its long history, Aberdeen seems to exist only as a departure point and service station for the transient population of some ten to fifteen thousand who live on the 130 oil platforms out to sea.
Staying in such a prosperous place has its advantages. There are plenty of good restaurants and hotels, local transport is efficient and certain sights, including Aberdeen's splendid Art Gallery and the excellent Maritime Museum , are free. Furthermore, the fact that the city is the bright light in a wide hinterland helps it to sustain a lively nightlife with some decent pubs and a colourful arts and cultural scene.
Aberdeen divides neatly into five main areas. The city centre , roughly bounded by Broad Street, Union Street, Schoolhill and Union Terrace, features the opulent Marischal College , the colonnaded Art Gallery with its fine collection, and homes that predate Aberdeen's nineteenth-century town planning and have been preserved as museums . Union Street continues west to the comparatively cosmopolitan West End, where much of the city's decent nightlife can be found amid the tall grey town houses. To the south, the harbour still heaves with boats serving the fishing and oil industries, while north of the centre lies attractive Old Aberdeen , a village neighbourhood presided over by King's College and St Machar's Cathedral and influenced by the large student population. The long sandy beach with its esplanade development, only a mile or so from the heart of the city, marks Aberdeen's eastern border.
In the twelfth century, Alexander I noted "Aberdon" as one of his principal towns, and by the thirteenth century it had become a centre for trade and fishing , a jumble of timber and wattle houses perched on three small hills, with the castle to the east and St Nicholas's kirk outside the gates to the west.
It was here that Robert the Bruce sought refuge during the Scottish Wars of Independence, leading to the garrison of the castle by Edward I and Balliol's supporters. In a night-time raid in 1306, the townspeople attacked the garrison and killed them all, an event commemorated by the city's motto "Bon Accord", the watchword for the night. A century later Bishop Elphinstane founded the Catholic university in the area north of town known today as Old Aberdeen , while the rest of the city developed as a mercantile centre and important port.
By the mid-twentieth century, Aberdeen's traditional industries were in decline, but the discovery of oil in the North Sea transformed the place from a depressed port into a boom town. The oil-borne prosperity may have served to mask the thinness of the region's other wealth creators, but it has nonetheless allowed Aberdeen to hold its own as a cultural and academic centre and as a focus of the northeast's identity into the new century.
Aberdeen's Dyce airport is seven miles northwest. The airport bus #27 and Aberdeen-Inverness bus #10 run to the city centre; a taxi costs around £10. The main train station is on Guild Street, in the centre (tel 0845/748 4950), with the bus terminal for intercity and regional services right beside it (regional buses tel 0870/608 2608; intercity buses tel 0870/550 5050). Ferries run from Jamieson's Quay in the harbour to Lerwick in Shetland and Stromness in Orkney. Note that from October 2002, Northlink will be taking over this service from P&O Scottish Ferries.
From the train and bus station it's a two-minute walk up the hill to Union Street, Aberdeen's main thoroughfare, and an even shorter stroll to the tourist office in Old Provost Ross's House, beside the Maritime Museum on Ship Row (July & Aug Mon-Sat 9.30am-7pm, Sun 10am-4pm; June & Sept Mon-Sat 9.30am-5pm; rest of year Mon-Fri 9.30am-5pm, Sat 10am-2pm; tel 01224/288828, ).
Almost all local buses (tel 01224/650065) pass along Union Street; buy a Farecard (in £2, £5 or £10 denominations) from the main transport office , 395 King St, or the busy city-centre kiosk outside Marks & Spencer on Union Street, which also hands out transport maps ; each time you travel the fare is deducted from the card. A open-topped bus tour passing the main sights runs regularly (July-Sept) from the Town House on Union Street (£4; or an "explorer" £6 ticket also buys a day's free travel on local buses).
Union Street and the surrounding area has a glut of attractive cafés and restaurants . Like most ports, Aberdeen caters for a transient population with a lot of disposable income and a desire to get drunk as quickly as possible: although you'll find no shortage of loud, flashy bars catering to such needs, there are still a number of more traditional old pubs which are well worth a visit.
