Hi All esp Steve!
Well my fears were unfounded. Tripadvisor altho very useful can cause worries!

The Best Western Premier Shaftesbury Kensington proved to be a great base & we got a free upgrade to a club room which was fab. (don't know if this would have happened if I hadn't e-mailed them) We were extremely happy with the whole experience & would stay there again. ( for anyone reading this we booked through the Lastminute.com Top Secret option and saved over £60 over 4 nights by choosing this method)

What about one of those celebrity bus tours or walks or the theatre?

Hi everybody,

We're having a weekend in London in a fortnight's time and have booked the novotel St pancras which is on Euston road and I believe close to the King's Cross underground station. It will be a hectic weekend of sightseeing,, maybe taking in a show too. Just wondering really what the area immediately around our hotel is like. Will it be thriving day and night? Is it a relatively safe area (with regards to other areas of london). We will just use the hotel as a base but might decide to have lunch or an early evening/late evening drink or bite to eat in a nearby bar.

I've read that the hotel has a really good restaurant called 'mirrors' but are there many other bars close by? I'm asking because of an experience we had in London the last time we visited. We decided to eat after seeing a show and as our hotel was a fair ride on the tube we headed back to that area to find somewhere to eat. Well that was a mistake because we could hardly find any eateries or even bars and what we did find, were closed I couldn't believe we were in London. Our first meal in London was a take-away pizza eaten in a bus stop for shelter

Please can I have some info on the area around our hotel ? Thanks very much.

Hi Shirley, i've stayed in the area several times as hotel rates tend to be good. I've never felt unsafe, the area used to have a bad reputation (mainly for prostitution) but you wouldn't know it now, it's been cleaned up a lot. It's not a particularly scenic part of the city but not a bad base.

There's a Pizza Express and an Irish pub just across from your hotel and quite a few pubs and convenience stores nearby. St Pancras Station has quite a decent selection of shops, cafes and restaurants aswell as a champagne bar, though none open particularly late. There's also the Brunswick Centre, maybe 10 minutes walk, again several shops and eateries.

I tend to spend most of my time around Soho. Lots of great restaurants and buzzing bars there and not a bad walk down Tottenham Court Road, maybe 20-30 minutes.

The problem with many areas in London shirley is that they are a thriving metropolis for business & workers during the week but dead over the weekend. Anywhere we class as "city" i.e liverpool street , bank etc are packed out on Friday nights and during the week with commuters but come saturday night everything is shut. Most people that work in london dont live there . Like us they travel in from the suburbs every day.

I've just asked Dave about the kings cross area and he said pretty much the same as marcus . Used to a bit of a dump but the area has had a lot of money pumped into it over recent years under a regeneration programme . (still ongoing) . Not the best but theres a lot worse and you will be fine .

Ok much as I thought it would be like. Thanks for those quick replies. I think I'll give the pizza express a miss but might try out the Irish bar. I'm getting a bit excited already

Shirley we stayed in Euston on our last visit to London, and found plenty of pubs and places to eat, and we felt safe there. I too would head into Soho if you're going to eat after the show, there's loads of places there open until the early hours.

Didn't realise you stayed in the same area Helen- what was your hotel called again?

forgot to ask- do the tubes run all through the night?

Shirley

The tube doesn't run throughout the night. I believe the last ones run till around 1am

Judith

Thanks Judith. We will have to take that into consideration if we do a late visit to Soho

But there are night buses which run throughout the night and it's only a short hop from Soho to Kings Cross in a taxi so it shouldn't be a problem.

SM

Great. Thanks Sma.

One more question (for now lol). How busy is the underground, generally early on a Saturday afternoon. I'm just wondering whether to brave it from Paddingtom Station to King's Cross with our small suitcase or will it be easier and cheapish to get a taxi?
Thanks

you could consider the 205 bus, starts at Paddington (stop E Eastbourne Terrace exit or stop H from front exit) and stops at the British Library next to the hotel. About 7 per hour on Saturday afternoon, takes about 25 minutes, cash fare £2.20 (considerably less if you get an Oyster card).

Gosh, I'm spoilt for choice. That bus sounds handy Steve although I think the tube journey is estimated at 13 minutes. I don't know how accurate these estimates are

Might be a change to see some of the sights as we go past on the bus though.

The 13 mins doesn't include the getting down to and up from the platforms - or the walk back along Euston Rd to the hotel! For this journey the bus could well be quicker and definately more interesting.

We stayed at the Thistle Bloomsbury Park Shirley. You will certainly see more on the bus, and the tubes will be busy - but they always are. However we always buy the all day travelcard, so that we can jump on and off the tube all day. If you take the bus from the station, then you'll have to pay again for any further journeys you make on that day.

Jump in a black taxi at least once shirley . All part of the london experience .

But you can use a travelcard on the buses too and you can still buy it at Paddington station or there even machines on some of teh bus stops now! But it might be easier to see if you can buy it on-line in advance from

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/

You'll still got time for it to be posted out to you and then you won't need to mess around once you arrive at Paddington.

Also, depending on what you plan to do once over the weekend the following can offer good value for money if you plan on visiting lots of the traditional tourist sites:

http://www.londonpass.com/how-it-works/index.html

Enjoy your weekend

SM

Can you definately buy it at the bus stop machines? I can't get sense out of the TfL website, it says you can buy the day buspass but another paragraph says that's been discontinued anyway!

Just to clarify for all - the Zone1-2 Travelcard is valid on Tube in Zones 1+2 and buses in all zones.