I’m trying to plan a trip to London for the NFL game this year. I’ve never been to London and don’t really know what the best neighborhoods to look in are. We’ll be obviously traveling to Wembley for the game on Sunday evening so being convenient to the Underground is critical, though my impression is that it’d be difficult to find a hotel that’s not near a tube line. We will spend a bit of money on the hotel and want some amenities but we’d probably not want to spend $300+ a night or anything. Considering we’ll be doing a lot of sight seeing and drinking, dining and shopping the amount of time we’ll spend in the hotel is limited. We’re a mixed group of 30 somethings used to city life so that’s the vibe we’d be in for. We don’t want to be in with the college kids nor the blue hairs.
So, with those thoughts in mind can you folks steer me towards a neighborhood in London to shop for a hotel. Any name brands that I should look for would be helpful and any attractions we should check out on non-game days.
Reported for what? In any case, the hotel district seems to be just north of Kensington Gardens, near Bayswater Road and just east of Hyde Park. We stayed at the Thistle Kensington Gardens, but there are quite a few hotels near that. Use Trip Advisor to see what fits into your price range, plus reviews.
There’s no such thing as ‘the hotel district’. Hotels are everywhere in central London.
I’m not a great fan of Kensington, although I know it’s popular with Americans, for some reason. I don’t find it terribly central. In the OPs case, I’d investigate Covent Garden and Mayfair (the ‘West End’). The Marriott County Hall is very popular because it’s right on the river opposite the Houses of Parliament and next to the London Eye, with lots of restaurants along the South Bank of the Thames.
But there’s literally 1000s of hotels, so if I was the OP I would buy a copy of TimeOut London, which is the travel guide I trust for hotel and dining recommendations, and then maybe come back with a shortlist for people to critique. Also check out the Forums on Fodors where there’s a bunch of very seasoned travellers.
I live in London (until Sunday, anyway), so haven’t often stayed in hotels - but I did stay in http://www.hoxtonhotels.com/ not very long ago and liked it. There are hotels all over London though - you might do better by working out where you want to be near, and looking for a hotel there. Are there any particular things, other than the game at Wembley, that you want to see while you’re here? How long are you over for?
Oh, man - I assumed that the mod would remove my “reported” post when he removed the Chinese “keep your Johnson up” spam! Sorry if anyone thought I was a butt! (And I know absolutely nothing about London hotels, so I can’t be any help to the OP - sorry again!)
I live outside London and when I 've stayed in town I’ve stayed at the Charing Cross Hotel and would reocmmend it. It’s a decent hotel and very convenient for the West End, Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square - basically all places with good nightlife and people watching. If you’ve never been to London this is a good place to start.
When is this game? It’s worth having a look on the TFL website and seeing if there’s any planned closures on the line, in case you need to plan alternate transport. Wembley Park is on the Metropolitan line, so have a look around Euston/Kings Cross area.
I’ve just spent a week in the Imperial Hotel, Russel Square. It’s about £110 a night for a double room, with breakfast included. It was nice enough, if slightly shabby at the edges. The nice thing about it was that you’re fifteen minutes walk from Covent Garden & Soho, as well as being on the Distric & Circle line which will, when running, deliver you to all the tourist stops.
My girlfriend and I have had good luck buying weekends away off lastminute.com, which offers flash hotels for big discounts (the caveat being you don’t know the hotel you’re staying at, just the location, til you’ve booked), but you might also want to look at www.hotelbooker.net. I used their hostelbooker website when I first moved to London, and it worked really well for me.
If you belong to your alumni association at a high enough level (e.g. Life for UCLA), or some private club, you may have privileges at Club Quarters. It might be a bit staid, but it looks comfortable enough and very reasonable for a London hotel. Since you’re there to see football games the liveliness of the hotel might not matter to you.
We stayed at the Marriott Grosvenor Square two Christmases ago and loved it. Centrally located to lots of cool stuff in Mayfair, but might be a bit far from the game. Of course, there is no more tourist-friendly subway system than the London Underground, so it really shouldn’t matter too much where you stay.
I second this. The Tube is used mostly by commuters and so they do a lot of linework on weekends. Very very important to check that the line/s you will be using are not closed. I have been caught out by this before.
I don’t precisely agree. The Tube is fantastic, but London is big. You can easily glance casually at a map and think that somewhere is close to a station, only to realise when you get there that it may have looked close on a small scale map but is actually further than is convenient. There are big gaps between stations.
With the current exchange rate at about 1.65 $/Pound, your max budget of about 180 pounds per night, will not get you many amenities in a hotel in London. But as you said, you won’t be spending much time in the hotel any way.
