Redescovering London
Trip Start
Jun 13, 2007
1
17
22
Trip End
Sep 23, 2007
London,
England,
United Kingdom
Friday, August 8, 2008
The Priceline information said the hotel had been newly upgraded and offered accommodation with breakfast included at a discount price of GBP49 a night, which sounded quite promising. If the accommodation I booked through them in France was anything to go by, it should be quite good.
As I keep returning to London, I find it's like coming back to a jilted lover - charming, comfortable but oh so indifferent.
Exiting Queensway tube station, the area seemed at once familiar and foreign to me until I discovered I had just walked past the building where I used to live in a serviced apartment with my ex-husband what seems like a lifetime ago.
It was recommended to us at the time by a junior Chilean diplomat and the area had a vague upmarket feeling about it, which was disastrously ruined when I had to leave a nearby Safeway supermarket with other shoppers in a panic because of an IRA bomb threat.
The area is now almost unrecognisable with its strong Middle Eastern influence. Women in full burkhas were passing me in the street and the building where we used to live was hemmed in by an Arab coffee shop on one side and a mobile phone outlet on the other, which opened up at the end to something like a kasbah with a myriad of small shops selling all manner of things.
As I arrived at the hotel, I found the facilities were in direct proportion to its grand name. The reception was so small there was no room for me to wait while a family of four in front me was checking in, so I left my luggage and crossed the street to The King Edward on the other side of the street which has a comfortable local-pub atmosphere about it.
While waiting to check in, I had a glass of merlot and studied its comprehensive menu, offering Sunday roast and, somewhat pretentiously, wagyu beef (also known as Kobe beef) burger for GBP10 among other things.
Back at the hotel I was given a choice of a single room with ensuite on the fourth floor and a small double with ensuite in the basement. I chose the basement because there is no lift and I refuse to haul suitcases up four floors.
This is the disadvantage of travelling solo to London. Many of the charming, small hotels conversions from Victorian townhouses have no lifts and all their single rooms are on the fourth floor - nothing but small former maid's rooms with attic windows.
My small double room in the basement is barely big enough for the bed but has all the bare necessities - a shower, loo and washbasin, wardrobe, a small chest of drawers doubling as a TV stand, a small table and a night table with a small cupboard - handy place to keep snacks and drinks. Most important of all - I have wi-fi access.
Here is even a hair drying as well as a small electric jug and teabags, sachets of coffee, milk and sugar. I have booked the accommodation for a week, so I try to make myself comfortable.
I discover I need to keep the curtains drawn, otherwise people walking by can look straight into my room. But after having put away the clothes I will need and arranging my laptop on the small table, using the end of the bed as a seat, I feel strangely settled in a poor-poet-in-the-garret kind of a way as I get dressed up for drinks at Henry's Bar.
I discovered Henry's Bar at 80 Piccadilly about two years ago - a really buzzy place just opposite the Green Park tube station and down the road from the Ritz. Terence Conran's Quaglino is only a hop and a skip away, so the area has a lot to offer.
Stratton House, where the bar is located, is being renovated at the moment, so it's no longer possible to sit outside where it used to be full of people on summer nights and impossible to get a table.
Henry's has an imaginative dinks menu and the food menu offers everything from tasty snacks and tapas to main meals which don't break the bank.
I had the spaghetti with scampi - which has oodles of scampi and is quite tasty. Unfortunately, this time the pasta was quite mushy and not al dente but the atmosphere and the people made up for it.
I'll be trying the signature Leek and Gorgonzola risotto the next time or the 21-day aged sirloin steak with fries, pan-fried cherry tomatoes and Béarnaise sauce.
Back at my poor-poet-in-the-garret hotel room, I promise myself to discover something new about London while I'm here even if it means stepping out of my comfort zone.
