Nothing screams high-society Brit like teatime in a lavish garden. Throw in an elaborate country house hotel, complete with a croquet lawn and four acres of gardens, and you've got yourself an anglophile's paradise.
Such is the Summer Lodge Country House Hotel in the town of Evershot, in Dorset's countryside, whose non-English specific features also include a spa and heated indoor pool.
Through November, the hotel is offering a package centered on Dorset's various and famed gardens, which includes two nights' accommodations in a Superior Room (with garden views), full English breakfast, nightly three-course dinner, a property tour, and visits to Montacute House and Tintinhull Gardens, both manor houses surrounded by--yup--gardens.
Plus, you'll get to experience Summer Lodge's own "Thoughtful Touches," like fresh milk, fruit and home-baked short bread in your room each day, candles at turndown and a departure bag of fresh fruit and water.
All this, for about $1,840. Oh, come on now. You didn't expect to play like Prince Charles without having to pay, did you?
To uncover the ultimate WASP hotel estate, we figured we'd head back to the mothership -- the region in Southeast England where the original Anglo and Saxon tribes settled in the fifth century. Their descendents rule over most Fortune 500 companies, feel confident in Madras pants, and don't mind spending about $600 a night to stay at a place like Chewton Glenn in Hampshire, England.
The hotel ranks as the second best in the United Kingdom according to Conde Nast Traveler's 2007 ranking. Amenities in the 58 rooms include everything one would expect from a top-tier establishment. The spa, ranked as number one by Traveler, includes some masochistic sounding treatments -- cold drench showers and molten brown body treatments. Outdoors, golf, tennis, and croquet abound, naturally.
And through February, Chewton has mid-week discounts and "three nights for the price of two" specials. Not that you need the price break.
We are suckers for a room with a killer view. We find that we are even more likely to forgive some minor hotel inconveniences if we can stare out the window at something pretty--yeah we are that shallow. Let's help out our fellow hotel mavens by uploading rooms with killer views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. We will feature our favorites in this space from time to time. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number of the hot view.
At the luxurious Buckland Tout-Saints Hotel in south-west England, the killer views go both ways--inside the hotel looking out gives you these immaculate manicured gardens and then the wide green beyond, and if you're outside the hotel looking in you'll see the cute-enough-to-eat manor house that is the Buckland Tout-Saints.
When we went to find out more about this grand hotel, we started getting confused by the British hotel rating system. Apparently the Buckland Tout-Saints Hotel is the proud bearer of not only three red stars, but also two AA Rosettes. We figure this is a good thing but are longing for an internationally standardized system so we can figure out hotel quality. Well, for the delightful view alone we give this place a dozen rosettes. Is that possible?
You know the scene. You open the door to your brand new hotel room, run over to the window, open the blinds and bam, you are hit with the anti-view. Maybe you are looking down a dirty alley, witnessing a drug deal, staring at an air shaft in the face, or seeing a brick wall. Whatever you are viewing it is not extremely pleasurable. Help out your fellow hotel mavens by uploading your anti-views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number with the not-so-easy-on-the-eyes view.
Windsor, west of London, might be the home of the Queen, but we're fairly sure she gets a better view than this one out of the Royal Adelaide Hotel in Kings Road, Windsor. The Royal Adelaide is just a five minute walk from Windsor Castle where Queen Elizabeth spends as much time as possible (if you have X-ray vision or an impressive security pass you might catch a glimpse of her).
Apart from having some rooms with really bad and boring views, the Royal Adelaide sounds like a decent enough place to stay. It's just had a multi-million pound upgrade so that it can get a 4-star rating and it's located just 15 minutes' drive from London Heathrow airport. Right now they're taking bookings for their big Christmas dinner and party. Just remember that if you stay the night, ask for a room without a wall outlook.
There are long-term stays and then there are long-term stays and the number of nights the Davidsons have stayed at a Travelodge in England must be record-breaking. Between 1985 and 1997, this elderly English couple stayed permanently at the Newark Travelodge in Nottinghamshire, and then when a new hotel was opened nearby in 1997, they moved to the Grantham A1 Travelodge, conveniently located next to the motorway.
The crazy thing is that it seems to work out almost cheaper for this couple to live at the Travelodge--because they book a year ahead they always get the special rate of £15 a night--plus there are no surprise bills for heating in winter or airconditioning in summer. They have their room cleaned daily for nothing and get an endless supply of toiletries. The Grantham Travelodge is about to mount a plaque at the hotel to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the first stay by its most loyal customers.
You know the scene. You open the door to your brand new hotel room, run over to the window, open the blinds and bam, you are hit with the anti-view. Maybe you are looking down a dirty alley, witnessing a drug deal, staring at an air shaft in the face, or seeing a brick wall. Whatever you are viewing it is not extremely pleasurable. Help out your fellow hotel mavens by uploading your anti-views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number with the not-so-easy-on-the-eyes view.
Be warned, however, that not every room in a hotel shaped like a castle has castle-like qualities. And so it is at the Norbreck Castle Hotel in Blackpool, England. This is the view from Room 859, and as the disgruntled guest had to say:
Yes, that's another room less than a metre away. With the lack of daylight coming in, and the lack of privacy even if you left the curtains open to let a wee bit light in, I felt like I was in a battery cage.
There probably are rooms at the Norbreck that do have a nice view, but if they try to check you into 859, just run.
Since we learned that sometimes booking a breakfast-inclusive package can be cheaper, we've paid a lot more attention to the morning meals on offer around the hotel world. So when Flickr photographer MildlyDiverting posted this pic of breakfast at the Malmaison Oxford Hotel we were a bit more than mildly diverted.
This attractive-looking basket is home to the breakfast-in-bed option at the Malmaison and it rather looks like something we'd like to souvenir, if we had a suitcase big enough. But since the Malmaison is housed in a former prison building, we're not actually recommending this course of action. To get this great breakfast there's a deal going there at the moment:
From £255 per night you can enjoy one of our glorious suites or super suites, champagne on ice, chocolate dipped strawberries, aromatic oils and candles, a chilled Mal CD and that all important champagne breakfast in your room.
Looks like our Flickr tipster got through the champagne before they took the picture!
You've gotta think a place is family-friendly when Britain's most well-known children's writer, Enid Blyton, used to regularly stay there. This week the UK Telegraph also agreed that the Knoll House Hotel is a good place for a family holiday.
Knoll House has nearly 80 rooms, and is best described as a "country house" set within a National Trust nature reserve. There's plenty to do with horse-riding, tennis courts, a pool and gym plus swimming, boating, fishing and windsurfing at the beach it overlooks.
Especially for the kids, they have a dedicated children's restaurant and a special playground. And for the parents, there are lots of possibilities for babysitting stints as well as family-friendly set-ups for some good family bonding time; plus many of the suites are set up with separate but interconnecting bedrooms for parents and kids.
It sounds good, but TripAdvisor reviews are a really mixed bag--you either love or hate Knoll House. The positives include comments like "A true family hotel, there was lots for children to do here" and a hotel that "catered brilliantly for the needs of my family"; but those previous guests who didn't enjoy their experience say "there is very little for young children to do" and complain about old-fashioned, under-supplied rooms. Who to believe? Who knows, but if you hear of it getting a reno and a proper kids club, it would definitely be on the good list.
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by jennm
