Foreign Perspectives

So long as you avoid the annual travel agents show, there’s usually lots of choice for hotels in London. The problem is that there are just too many areas to consider if you’re not familiar with London and too many hotels in most of those areas too even if you are.

For a short-break you really need a fairly central hotel though and that narrows the selection considerably. Typically you’ll find that short-break trips are themed so, for example, you might be going on a break to a West End hotel or one of those so-called Theatreland hotels. Don’t get too hung up on the distinction between these categories as the area usually referred to is quite small so you can find the same hotel listed under either one depending on which brochure or site you’re looking at.

The reason that this labelling can often seem to be a little hazy is that it’s quite a compact area within London with a very high concentration of attractions within it. So although you’d obviously expect to be pretty close to the theatres and Covent Garden in one of these hotels, you’re also fairly close to Oxford Street thus making it a very lively area from early morning to late at night (for that reason you’re best asking for an “inside room” if you’re a light sleeper). Interestingly, it’s also well within striking distance of the Eurostar terminal to Europe and, if you didn’t have to worry about luggage it’s quite a pleasant and interesting walk which takes in a number of major London sights along the way.

One thing to watch in central London is that not all hotels provide a full complement of what one would normally consider essential services. For example, although St Giles offers car parking and a very respectable gym with swimming pool in most cases you don’t get parking and the “gym” is a very basic affair indeed.

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2. Holiday thoughts
3. Have you thought of Argentina for your holidays?

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.