What's up: We chose this hotel because it gave us the option to cook food if we wanted to. And...it provided complementary breakfast in the morning!Woohoo! We stayed in this hotel on two separate occasions during our trip between London and Paris.
Parking: We travelled via the London Underground (Tube) so this didn't apply to us. There are two Tube stations nearby: Borough and London Bridge. We found it easier to go through Borough Station since it's a straight shot to the hotel. Their website does mention that offsite parking is available for a fee.
Environment: Upon entry into the hotel, you'll see the reception desk as soon as you pass through the doors. To me, it felt awkwardly placed and looked temporary; not sure if that's the case. The elevator is to the left of the reception desk and the breakfast/market pantry area is to the right. The room's electricity is also dependent upon a keycard. The gym is located in the basement, right next to the complementary laundry room (there's even soap pods). It has a couple of cardio machines and a variety of free weights and weight machines. They also have an option for you to plug in your own music and make use of their speaker system; that was kind of cool.
What was ordered: We stayed at this location twice on our trip. During our first stay, we were placed in a single bedroom. At first glance, it didn't look too bad. But then we started noticing some little things. There were no coffee pods for our Nespresso. Ok, we can live without coffee I guess. When we wanted to use the dishwasher, we didn't find any dish washing detergent and when we tried to do a hot water rinse, it didn't clean well. The counter space in the bathroom was pretty much nonexistent and there was no shower gel, just an empty bottle. At this point we were pretty annoyed but since we had one more day, we decided to tough it out. We left the Do Not Disturb sign on our door but when we returned after our outing, we found out that the hotel staff had came in to refresh the room regardless of the sign! And they still didn't refill the shower gel (facepalm)! We weren't too satisfied with our stay here and were not looking forward to the second occurrence when we were going to return in a few days. The only positive thing about this stay was that the complementary breakfast was fairly good and they had several options to choose from.
Round two. After returning from Paris, we checked into the hotel again and were actually given an upgrade to a two bedroom suite. Wow! The room was a lot bigger and the two bedrooms each had its own bathroom with lots of counter space. I have to say, pretty much everything that was bad in our first stay turned good with this one. We had coffee pods, dish washing detergent, shower gel, and a working dishwasher! Can't be too sure of the DND occurrence this time around because we only stayed for a night. Breakfast was just as good.
Yay/Nay/Meh: Meh. It was pretty hit-or-miss during our stay here. We had a not so awesome experience our first time around but it improved a lot in our second stay. I still think the biggest annoyance was the fact that they came in to refresh our room even though we had the Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the door. However, the staff was friendly and welcoming on both occurrences and we enjoyed the complementary breakfast. As with other hotels, credits cards were accepted and they charge an initial deposit when you check in and will be returned at check out. read more