Club Quarters St. Paul's, London

We had travelled to London on work and stayed on for the weekend to enjoy more of the city. Club Quarters St Pauls have reduced rates on weekends as it is primarily a business hotel.

The location is excellent. 5 min walk from St Pauls Underground station and 2 min walk from the National rail station. If you don't have much luggage, you can take the picadilly line from the iarport and change for the central line at Holborn. (there are steps to climb, so you won't be able to do it if you have too much luggage)

If you get a room facing the road, you will have a wonderful side view of St Pauls Cathedral. Since this is the financial district, it quietens down by evening and its not too busy or noisy. On Sunday morning, we heard 2 rounds of a half an hour symphony of the church bells. The first around 9am and the 2nd around 11:30am.

There is so much to see around this area and everything is walking distance- Millenium Bridge, Shakespeares globe, Tate modern, Gaugin, London school for boys. There are at least 15 more historical churches within a 15 minute walking radius. We even walked upto Trafalgar and the London eye and back. There's a new mall thats opened up just next door, if you want to shop.

There are plenty of restaurants around this area. Sadly, majority of them aren't open on the weekend. However, the St Paul's restaurant - Cote Brasserie is open 7 days a week and provides good food at good rates. If you want a larger choice and lower rates, step into the Marks & Spencer food store next door. The range is from scones to sushi and they have a wonderful choice of meal packages (large sandwich + dessert + drink for 2 people under 6 pounds)

The biggest advantage of the club quarters are their room sizes. This is the 3rd hotel we have stayed at in London and we found this to have the largest rooms (we took a standard double). There is a large desk in each room which made it easy for us to work with our multiple cameras and laptops. (other hotels, we had to use the bed to spread out our equipment)

Free wifi and wired access in every room. 3 workstations in the club room downstairs with internet that are free to use and a printer to take free printouts - really helpful for boarding passes and online bookings of attractions.

Every floor has a water dispenser serving distilled chilled water and sealed half litre bottles to take away water, even when you leave the hotel.

Every room has a kettle and facilities for brewing tea and coffee. The guest supplies room on every floor, has extra blankets, tea, coffee and other necessities. You just open the closet and take what you need.

The club room also has a coffee machine which brews fresh cappucinos, lattes, espressos and other types of coffee. Magazines and newspapers are available here for reading. The rooms all have a few books on London.

Good quality soap, shampoo, bath gel were provided in each room. Club quarters are designed in a way that makes the traveller self sufficient and least dependent on service staff.

If you book a longer stay, you can request for a fridge and microwave in your room. They supposedly even have studio apartment set ups with a kitchenette, but we didn't get a chance to take a look.

Keycards give access to the lift, so secuirty is very high.

Although check in is supposed to be at 3pm and check out is supposed to be at 12noon, when we checked in at 11:45am our room was already available, so they showed us straight in. We checked out at 9am and used their locker facilities for our luggage. After sightseeing, we came back to the hotel by 4pm. Used the washrooms in the basement, repacked in the club room and had a cup of coffee before our taxi came to pick us up at 5pm. 

Room Tip: Ask for a room with a view of St Pauls Cathedral. Since it is in the business district and there is double glass, there's no noise at night, even if you are facing the road. The intermittent 30 min bells symphony will wake you up on Sunday morning though.

Also published on TripAdvisor.com

Renaissance London Heathrow Hotel, London

We had travelled on work. Conference was at this hotel and hence we had to stay here for the duration.

The hotel is quite close to the airport and there are quite a few free bus services to the hotel. 111, 245, 555 etc. However if you need to get into the city, then you need to take one of these buses to Terminal 3 and then catch the underground or Heathrow express to the city. It took an average of an hour and a half each way.

Rooms were decently sized. bathroom was also a decent size, but the bathtub that you have to climb into, to take a shower was quite high and could be difficult for people with stiff joints or aching legs. There was no handrail in our bathroom and we had to hold on to the shower apparatus to ensure we didn't slip. The flushing system in our room was terrible.

Breakfast was good and had a large spread with eggs to order and waffles, but room service was absoultely terrible. The day we first reached, it was too late to go anywhere. We ordered a medium rare steak - it came well done - too dry, no sauce, no seasoning. Couldn't even take 2 bites out of it. The thai green curry was a sticky mess. Who puts cornflour in thai curry?

This is a huge hotel and has plenty of people needing to use the 4 elevators. But the elevators are so slow. They take about a minute after reaching, for the doors to open on each floor.

Service staff is friendly and helpful. The concierge was very good about booking some tickets for us. They have a tie up with a taxi company if you need to use one.

You have to pay for internet access.

There is a starbucks on the premises which offers better coffee and lite bites, than the hotel restaurant. Water heater is provided in the room with provision for brewing tea or coffee.

There's a store at the gas station opposite from where you can buy crisps, juice, soda and water. (Bottled water in the hotel is very expensive).

If you have to stay here, I recommend a 5 minute walk to the 3 magpies next door for a much better quality meal.

This hotel is ok, if you need to be near the airport. We wouldn't stay here of our own choice.

Also published on TripAdvisor.com

Hotel Russell, London

We booked this hotel online while searching for something close to the Covent Garden area. This was our first trip to London and it looked like most of the attractions that we wanted to visit in the evenings, were within walking distance from the hotel. We weren't mistaken.

From the airport, the Picadilly line brought us straight to Russell Square station which is not even a 2 minute walk to the hotel. We booked the shopping package which included full breakfast buffet and a 20pound Harrods shopping card.

The building is absolutely beautiful and staff were very helpful. However, being used to hotels in India, South East Asia, USA, Africa and the Middle East, we were horrified when we first looked into the room. It was so tiny! The bathroom was bigger than the bedroom! The bed was pushed into a corner, so when sharing a bed, one person has to literally jump over the other if they need to wake up at night. However, after subsequent hotel stays in Europe, we realised that the room was a fair size for its location.

Location was wonderful. The train station is next door. the Big Bus stop is less than 3 minute walk. We took an Evan Evans tour to Stonehenge and their pick up location was in a hotel opposite the dining room. The British Museum is less than a 7 minute walk. Kings Cross station is about 12 minutes walk. And the walks are wonderful, around these historic buildings and lovely gardens. We were really lucky on our August trip as it was bright weather throughout.

Breakfast buffet had a huge spread of hot and cold items. tea, coffee and toast is served at your seat. The dining hall is very busy, so you need to mind your belongings as you really can't expect the staff to keep an eye with so much going on.

Plenty of restaurants in the area, we discovered a couple of really lovely Italian family run places that served outstanding food until quite late at night (11pm). There are a couple of 24 hour stores around, if you want to pick up crisps and drinks.

We absolutely loved the hotel and the only reason we did not stay here on our September trip was because we wanted to explore another part of the city.

Also published on TripAdvisor.com

Sentrim Nairobi Boulevard Hotel, Nairobi

There is nothing outstanding about this hotel. Most tour operators we contacted during the planning stage seemed to be pushing this hotel for the night stay in Nairobi (which is inevitable given the time taken to travel to the parks if traveling by road (6 hours or so) and your flight timings )

Its a tiny hotel. Serves buffet breakfasts. Nothing remarkable, nothing outstanding. I'd rate it a 2 or 2.5 on 5. Not very clean but not dirty either. Bathroom doors do not lock. Bathroom windows overlook the common corridor people use to reach other rooms on the floor. Not a very comfortable scenario for taking a bath (The glass is translucent and at head level) or using a washroom

Le Meridien, Jaipur

The Hotel was absolutely lovely. We stayed in one of the suites with the en suite garden with a swing. The rooms were very comfortable. The bathroom had a jacuzzi with a glass wall between the bathroom and the garden. It was quite difficult for us to leave the room.

My husband was there on work for a conference that was held at the hotel and he said the arrangements were excellent. I had tagged along so I could attend the Jaipur Literature festival (JLF) which was on at the same time and my husband extended his stay.

The JLF was held at Diggi palace in the city and the travel time took us about an hour each morning, so this was inconvenient.

The food was good. We had the buffet breakfasts daily and dinner at one of the restaurants if we were back early enough for dinner.

We quite enjoyed our stay here and will return if we are travelling on work or leisure. But for the JLF, we would prefer to stay somewhere closer to the venue so we can attend all the sessions without having to wake up too early