Description: My boyfriend and I set out for a night away in our home town, courtesy of the IgoUgo travel club. I’ve never stayed in a hotel in London before, so it was an interesting feeling – I kept thinking we were having a weekend away from home, but the Halcyon is only perhaps some 4 miles from where we live!
We arrived in the evening, having come from work to meet in Holland Park. I arrived second, so the brief check-in procedure had already been taken care of. If you didn’t know there was a hotel here, you wouldn’t necessarily spot it! Holland Park is just to the west of Marble Arch and Kensington, and some of the newer countries (Ukraine, Uzbekistan) that haven’t quite made it to Kensington have their embassies here. The hotel is a pink-painted old building on the corner of Holland Park Avenue, with a porch entrance discretely open up a flight of stairs.
When we got to our room I was very impressed. It felt less like a hotel room than any I’ve been in, and more like a guest room in a very luxurious private house. The walls in room 42 are blue checks, and the furnishings are blue, yellow and cream. The large, comfortable bed and the window (leading to a small balcony) have matching canopies over them, giving the room a slightly exotic air. There is a comfortable two seat sofa, several chairs, a table, desk, and television.
Leading off the room are three smaller rooms. There is a small hall as you enter, with a selection of current magazines on a small table (including Time Out, a very useful guide to events in London). The other side of the bedroom is a dressing room with hanging space, mini-bar, and drawers. The bathroom is large, decorated in earth tones with a huge bath and a couple of enormous mirrors.
The whole hotel has an air of quiet, English luxury about it. There are no flunkies opening doors, and the whole place has an air of comfortable, understated luxury that is never pompous. A lot of thought had gone into making the room a pleasant place to be in, with all the things you might need for a long stay as well as an overnight visit. The one down side was that it was a bit difficult to get hold of reception by phone when we tried, just before we checked out.
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