May Fair Hotel, London

I waffled hard on this one, seriously considering a dozen or so different hotels at one point or another. In the end, I decided that the May Fair would be a good way to burn a stash of Club Carlson points that I didn’t have many other uses for. Special thanks to FlyingDoctorWu for talking me down from the ledge a few times.

I had been warned about the “scene” here, but decided to give it a go anyway. And I’m glad I did.

We were shown to our junior suite on the 2nd floor (I don’t believe you can book a Jr. Suite with points, but I had emailed and paid to secure an upgrade and breakfast in advance). It was a nice size (479 sq ft) in a city where so many of the rooms seem to be closet-sized.





The room had an aged-but-funky boutique feel to it:



With a mini-fridge straight out of Austin Powers:



And the bathroom was also quite large, with one of those half-width shower doors that I'll never understand:



Oddly, toiletries from San Francisco:





Overall, we had a pretty good stay here, and for a room in London, we got an amazing value. The location is very central for sightseeing, and the room was big and nicer than many.

Breakfast in the restaurant is okay, but I wouldn’t pay the 30 or 40-some GBP per person that they ask for it. Simply not worth it, and there are options in the area I’d choose instead. In fact, we skipped breakfast our last two nights, though that also had something to do with some pretty large meals at night

The only big negative we ran into happened on our second night. As we got home and started getting ready for bed, we heard loud music from the restaurant (a private event was going on) in our room, making it impossible to fall asleep.

When I complained, the manager apologized and offered to move us, though only smaller rooms were available. He promised that the music would turn off at midnight, so we decided to stay put and wait. Sure enough, it shut off at 12:00am on the dot. The bar is well insulated, so I think it’s just the restaurant that has this issue. It didn’t happen again during our stay. Not sure how high in the hotel you need to go to buffer from the music.

Next up: Four Days In London