For those of you who have been to London and know it fairly well (since I don’t), H and I are interested in what you would consider to be good hotels to stay in. We tend toward more budget places vs high end, but as always, it depends upon pros/cons.
This trip will be for next year IF I can snag Abba Voyage tickets (going on sale for late May to sometime in the fall). They will be playing in a new venue being built in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford. Our musing has us spending a week or so in England before likely proceeding to Germany to visit a former exchange student we hosted. Not all nights would need to be in the same location if there are “different” better locations for seeing Abba and seeing more of London.
Tickets go on sale in a couple days - they might all get snapped up in minutes, but if I’m lucky, where would you stay?
I’m asking now because I can supposedly buy ticket/hotel packages for various hotels near the venue and across London and I want to be prepared to “snap” vs losing out due to having to do research or making a blind guess.
Any thoughts are welcome, from Hostels to High End. If you’ve liked it, I have a day or two to consider it and make my list - in case I get lucky. At the very least, I’ll have ideas should anything else tempt me to go to London in the future.
No Covid worries for now. If Covid is an issue in the latter half of 2022, we’ll deal with it then.
I have to start off by saying that I am a huge ABBA fan and would love to go! I was so happy that S no longer lives in London …until I heard about this.
We have traveled to London several times and we stay on our hotel points. Hyatt Regency Churchill Square or the Marriott in Grosvenor Square have been our go-to’s.
We had great luck with Premier Inns in London when we were over there a few years ago. It’s a big British chain. Inexpensive, but nice. I would gladly stay at pretty much any Premier Inn in the UK. They are kind of HamptonInn level maybe.
We have stayed at the Waldorf Hilton on Aldwych and the Hilton London Metropole. The Waldorf was great, just around the corner from Covent Garden. The Metropole wasn’t in the “heart” of stuff but was a block from the Edgware Road tube station and a quick walk to Paddington, so it is really easy to get around.
Part of what actually attracts us is seeing how it’s done - new “stuff” mixed with old “loves,” etc. It’s difficult to explain.
Then we’ll couple it with a trip. It’s as good an excuse as any for a trip. London hadn’t really appealed enough to make the top of our list before, but this puts it there.
Due to the pandemic we had to cancel a “set” trip to Germany and Poland (got refunded for most of it at least). We probably won’t add Poland to this one, but since our former exchange student is in Germany, we’ll likely meander there, and possibly the Netherlands since she lives close to it.
Premier Inns are nice. You can get a full English breakfast buffet in the morning and they usually have pretty okay restaurants, although in London I would opt for something a little more interesting.
We alternated with AirBnBs/flats and Premier Inns with the occasional hostel or Travelodge thrown in when we did 3 weeks in London and Scotland about 5 years ago. The Premier Inns were pretty solid/good. They are not like a super luxurious splash out, but consistently good. The only problem we had was we were traveling with our kids (then 15 & 12) and they have family rooms for this and the one in the Kensington PI was pretty cramped, but it was just for one night. All the others we stayed in (at least 3 different ones) had plenty of room and unless you are traveling with kids you shouldn’t run into that problem. No other complaints at all. Good prices and usually pretty good locations too.
We stayed in the Bank (Tower) PI in London just because I wanted to be close to the Thames so I knew where I was and didn’t get too turned around. We did run into some financial types at restaurants (it’s in The City), but it was really convenient to the tube station and nice to walk along the Thames and cross over to the other side on London Bridge or the Millennium Bridge and come back across on Tower Bridge.
I believe the show is out in Olympic Park in the east end. That’s a long way from most museums (South Kensington) although the Jubilee line is reasonably fast from Stratford through to Westminster (25-30 mins). I would stay somewhere more central close to the Jubilee Line. Green Park would be most convenient but expensive. Maybe the south bank between Waterloo and London Bridge would be cheaper, that way you can walk to Covent Garden etc for dinner while being close enough to Southwark tube station.
Lots of references here to hotels being close to “the Tube” as if that’s a monolithic thing. London’s a big place. This show is way out in the east end.
If you were planning to go to New York, you wouldn’t consider a hotel in Harlem to be a suitable base for a trip to the Coney Island boardwalk, just because both are on the subway. You’d look for somewhere on the right subway line (preferably an express line) that’s not too far away, especially if you are planning to return to your hotel late in the evening.
Then I will change my post to say…the Holiday Inn Kensington was very centrally located for what WE wanted to do…and the proximity to the Tube was a plus for us.
Yep, already done, so definitely hoping to get an email with a code tomorrow. I have no idea exactly how many people are wanting to see this show though - or how fast their internet connections are compared to the slow one where I am. Time will tell. I’ll be up and on the computer by 5am.
That’s what it looked like on a map and why I mentioned being able to stay at two different places, because it looked easier. Thanks for confirming it.
I’m thinking two nights surrounding the show in Stratford and was open to ideas for other places. We’d likely do the “other” first to aid with jet lag and put the concert at the end of the London leg, but if I get tickets, getting that accommodation will be first and we’ll then know what dates to book for the earlier part.
Honestly I don’t know why you would stay in Stratford, especially for two nights. If you want to be on the eastern side of London then stay in Greenwich and then you can walk up to the Royal Observatory through the park. Lots of nice restaurants in that area. You can get on the DLR and the riverboats are also a nice way to get to central London.
