Highlands Hotel

We had a great two nights here, using it as a base touring around this area. It was our second bargain two night hotel break in Donegal, having travelled to here from Annagry and having spent three weeks in France shortly before we made it to Donegal. The hotel has limited wifi, which worked well around reception but we couldn’t get it to work in the restaurant or breakfast rooms. It didn’t work in our room. There are a number of brochures available in the reception promoting various attractions including the nearby Finntown railway, which runs along the edge of a huge brown trout lake in the shadow of a mountain and was fascinating. This entire county has to be one of the friendliest places on earth. No matter where we went, shopped, ate, toured and wandered around everyone was just so warm, friendly and welcoming. This hotel was no different; open friendly hard working people. The hotel was comfortable with our room a decent size, good décor, a double & single bed and a large bathroom. There was a flat screen tv on the wall. The food we had (haddock & chips € 10) and prawn cocktail (€ 8) and night two we both had steak special) was all very good, fairly priced, the stout was excellent and the white wine served icily crisp. It was hectically busy in the restaurant especially on the Thursday night of our stay, mainly due to their sirloin steak special, € 15 for a ten ounce steak, French fried onions, chips, peas and a pepper sauce. A few musicians also perform on Thursday nights. I’m sure the hard working staff are exhausted at the end of the night. We were tired just watching them. Parking is very limited at the front of the hotel and while there’s a car park at the rear of the hotel there’s no access from the car park. Breakfast was fine, the porridge superb followed by an Irish brekky fry of fried egg, pork sausage, bacon, black & white pudding and tomato. But we do restrict our intake of this sort of food. It’s not just this hotel it’s common in hotels to find cheap meats; cheap eggs, plastic skinned, fatty, salty sausage, fatty, salty, white pudding, cheap bacon and awful powdered coffee in hotels from one to five star. I’d prefer if hotels would use their buying power to purchase natural skinned meats, and better quality ingredients with a bit less fat and a bit less salt. I’d like to see the days of powdered coffee coming to a close — real coffee is so much better. We would return here.

We dined at the Highlands hotel everyday during the Glenties Harvest Fair 2011. As visitors, we had many questions about the fair, and various activities, and the main person there was incredibly helpful. He was running the front desk, taking food orders, and it seemed whenever we had a question, he was there to answer it. He remembered our tea preferences, never forgot to follow through an any question no matter if it came up in conversation, or if we asked the question at the front desk. They guy was incredible and should probably be managing several hotels in the busiest cities in the world. I only wish I knew his name. The food was great, the tea was great. We were there for a traditional Irish music session on Thursday night, back on Friday for dinner and the opening of the fair, lunch on Saturday and I was there for the 10k race check-​in, and again we were there for the dancing in the ballroom and the fair parade. We really enjoyed visiting the highlands — it was like coming home.