For the past few months I?ve been quite preoccupied with finding luxury London hotel rooms at less-than-luxury prices; not necessarily luxury rooms that have been heavily discounted, but rooms that are simply well-priced to begin with. Perhaps a room in a hotel without all of the amenities of a full-on luxury destination, or a tiny room in a posh hotel or a normal-sized room that is stylish but doesn’t a bathroom decorated in gold leaf.
I have, in short, been trying to find the unknown gems. The tucked-away hotel that has no bar but exquisite, quiet rooms; the quirky place with copper baths and creaky floors but no room service. I?ve come to realise that what I want from a hotel room is quiet, cleanliness, good wifi and good ventilation (God, I?m eighty), but at the same time, if I?m spending upwards of £200 (which isn?t at all difficult in London, obviously) then I want something slightly special. Stylish. ?Hip?. (Kill me.) Otherwise I?ll book into a well-established chain, somewhere boring, and be happy that I can ? if I wish ? have a buffet breakfast in the morning alongside eight hundred other people. So I wanted to document my budget-luxury hotel experiences and I have quite a few posts to catch up on. I’m starting with Number Sixteen in South Kensington not just because it’s chronologically the first I stayed in (I think") but because it presents me with a big hotel review dilemma: does my desire to stay somewhere luxurious and cool overtake m...