Ah yes, the hotel. To start, our room was small and we received one towel each (no face cloth, hand towel or bath mat). We had to specifically request a clean one the next day.
On our first two nights there, the construction near the hotel kept going until one in the morning with jack-hammering being the worst part of it. We asked to see another room, but the one we were shown had a leaking toilet and the shower drain looked plugged with hair.
We asked again a day later to see a new room and got one facing the interior courtyard rather than the street, which cut down on the noise. The room was smaller, but we took it. we couldn’t walk past each other without one of us having to crawl over the bed out of the way. The in-room safe was also broken and we had to carry our passports, and receipts for travellers cheques with us when we went out.
On the third night an alarm went off in a vacant building two doors down and kept going until seven the next morning. By this time we were exhausted.
After this though the noise was fine and we were able to sleep regular hours again.
The breakfast was greasy and consisted of corn flakes, toast, beans, stewed tomatoes, sausage or peameal bacon every day. There was not a bit of fruit to be found.
The neighbourhood itself was kind of rough. We were a half block from King’s Cross/St. Pancras station and had hookers on the corner, people sleeping on the street at the station, and some characters that you didn’t want to approach. In our London guidebook (under the heading violent crime) it said don’t hang around King’s Cross after dark. We didn’t find this out until after we had arrived.
So why didn’t we move hotels? Well, we prepaid through a travel agent (a reputable one) and the hotel was recommended in Air Transat’s London guide. Since, after the first three nights, we were able to sleep again, we decided to overlook the hotel’s other faults, and despite the warning in the book we were never harassed.
Instead, we just stayed out and kept busy.
Dispatches from Obscurity 