What is your favorite London hotel?

[DemoTex]

The moon tonight, and last, inspired this question. Last night if was a half-moon. Tonight it is a waxing gibbous moon.

My all-time favorite London hotel is on Half Moon Street, the Mayfair. It is a great little place on a short street that was the name of a Paul Theroux novel, Half Moon Street, a few years back.

My favorite pub, The Grape (ca 16XX), is just around the corner. It is a great neighborhood, although after dark hookers cruise the narrow streets in high-priced cars looking for wealthy johns. No one seems to mind the hookers. They never enter the hotel bars (unless, maybe, they have a "date").

I have a chance to cover the Farnborough Air Show next month. If it happens, I'll stay at the Mayfair and commute to Farnborough every day.

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. Phoenix Hotel...a bit to the north of Kensington Gardens.

http://www.phoenixhotel.co.uk/

[DemoTex]

4. Nice! Great location too.

Another good thing about the Mayfair is that the Ritz is just around the corner. Great old bar there. Then begins Jermyn Street! Best cigar stores and mens cloths in the world (well, off Saville Row). I'm not into their suits, but I'll buy ties there in a pair of seconds.

[greatauntoftriplets]

6. I have walked through the Ritz, but never visited the bar there...

First time I was in London in 1971, my aunt and uncle happened to be there at the same time...staying at Claridge's. They took me to lunch there. It was damn bland food, but quite an experience. Their suite was to die for.

[seemunkee]

2. any

If I get to be in London I'll take any room you got

[DemoTex]

3. Dig that!

I love London.

[greatauntoftriplets]

5. Me too, yet I once gave up a night in London when I didn't have to...

Here's the story. I had been in London, spent several nights there. Then took the train and boat to Paris for a few days. At the time (this was the 1990s) the French dock workers were on strike in several ports, so I could not take the boat I had intended to. So had to go Dover to Calais, because they were not on strike in Calais. No problem, spent the night on the boat.

Coming back, however, was a problem. The strike was still on so I had to return Dover to Calais...except I had to take a boat and then train that would get me into London about 8:30 at night...I had booked to take an overnight boat back, but suddenly was faced with the idea of finding a place to stay overnight in London...since I was heading to Cornwall the next day.

Yikes! So I sat for a while in Dover waiting for a London-bound train, eyeing the guesthouses nearby. I decided the heck with it, left the train platform and got a nice room in the 2nd guesthouse I found.

The idea of being in London without a place to stay in advance was scary. I did have reservations for when I returned from Cornwall. But that was not until several days after my early arrival.

[DemoTex]

10. Great story!

I have never been to France when some union was not on strike. The worst was in about 1995 when the dog-poop-picker-uppers went on strike. That was shitty.

[greatauntoftriplets]

11. That same trip...

The Metro employees went on a one-day strike. Vive la France!

I was sitting in a Metro station (at least I was sitting!) waiting for a train and some announcement came over the loudspeaker...that I could not understand. I do speak French (sorta, use it or lose it) but it was impossible to understand in that environment. I asked someone sitting next to me what had been said and he snarled and said "Mitterand".

Eventually I left the Metro station and took a bus.

:shrug:

[u4ic]

7. I've only stayed at one

and I can't remember the name, only that it used to be the London Private Hospital. Behind All Souls Church on Oxford St.

I thought with it having been a hospital, I might see a ghost or two. No luck. x(

edit: just remembered. Langham Place. There was a Langham House hotel right nearby, and I thought that was my hotel at first. Yeah, as if I could afford something ritzy on my budget?

[DemoTex]

13. Reminds me of my brother's medical rotation at Edinburgh, for some reason.

He did a 6-week radiology rotation in Edinburgh during his last term of medical school. We met him there for a long weekend. We stayed at the Balmoral, but he lived in squalid nursing dorms. I thought that was great. That was long before I knew he was gay. But there were male nurses there, so I guess it was OK. He loved Edinburgh.

He actually found his beside manner in Edinburgh. It came at the beside of an elderly woman who was undergoing a barium-enema type radiological examination. She was in the classic position (on side, upper leg up) for the administration of an enema. The Scottish radiologist said to her, in his thick brogue, "Aye, my dear, I must now stick this wee nozzle up your wee anus." Russell (my brother) spewed. He broke up laughing. But that was that. He has never again laughed with a patient.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

8. I've never stayed in a hotel in London

I've got enough relatives from both sides of the family in London to ensure I'm never in need of a hotel when I go there (admittedly I've only been there twice)

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. It would be the Connaught if I could actually afford to stay there,

but my London experience has been mostly youth hostels. :(

[SmokingJacket]

12. The Talbot, circa 1990.

Okay, so you have to share the room with nutty old women who accuse you of stealing their cardigan sweaters, or maybe homesick Australian nannies, and, okay, the bed is actually a cot and the shower stall opens into the room and the toilet down the hall smells like a hamster cage, but you can't beat seven pounds a night!

[DemoTex]

14. Quite the deal, SJ.

My experience has been that even the cheapest London hotels have clean sheets. You pay for thread-count.

[spindrifter]

15. The Garden Court in Bayswater/Kensington area.

Very conveniently located and reasonably inexpensive. There is a great Middle Eastern cafe nearby that serves outstanding carrot juice! What a combo--carrot juice and a cheap falafel.