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Eating At Belgraves May Plunge You Into A Kafka Novel
Yesterday we told you how we ended up slightly underwhelmed by our stay at the Belgraves on opening night; today, it’s time to turn away from the rooms and towards something equally important – the restaurant and bar.
Belgraves has enlisted celeb chef Mark Hix to head up the resto (imaginatively called Hix Belgravia). But could the restaurant pep up the slightly disappointing hotel? Here goes.
We checked in at 8pm, stomach empty, hoping to go straight into dinner. The restaurant seemed buzzing but not full. But when we asked at check in whether we had to reserve a time or could pop down whenever, we got different answer after different answer after different answer.
First, it was fully committed for the evening. Then – after we suggested eating at the bar – a table in the restaurant suddenly opened up at 9.45pm. Within one minute, that offer had been retracted, and the offer had been extended to us to eat the restaurant menu in the bar. Next thing we knew, the guy at check in was insisting on showing us round the bar – despite us saying we’d rather just get to our room and deal with this in five minutes.
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Pounce On These Leap Year Hotel Deals Now, Before They Leap Away
Yes, it's a Leap Year! An entire day added to the month, an entire extra day for some hotel-lovin'. And the hotels are pretty excited about it too! We've hunted around for the best Leap Year deals from San Antonio to New York to London. Unsurprisingly, several of them overlap with Valentine's Day festivities—but as they say, bargains make the heart grow fonder...
Grand Hyatt New York, fresh from its recent $130 million renovation, is feeling generous. So they're singling out people who are either turning 29 this year or who were born on a leap year. While the 29-year-olds actually make out with something cool (free appetizer or dessert at New York Central, pictured above), leap year babies (anyone born in 2008, 2004, 2000, 1996, etc), as usual, get the short end of the stick. That would be a "free" Dylan's Candy Bar cupcake...-shaped tin (not even an actual cupcake!) from the hotel's 24-hour convenience store, Market.
With a purchase of $9 or more. Seriously. These guys only celebrate their birthday once every four years. Can't we just give them a free cupcake and call it a day? Rates from $309.
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Opening Night at The Belgraves Was Not Without (Quite) a Few Teething Problems
So Belgraves – Thompson’s first hotel outside of the US – opened Wednesday night, and we were seventh to check in on opening night. What to expect? Well, according to the hotel:
Belgraves interprets the Thompson luxury experience in London, joining an ongoing creative movement in design, dining and art that is currently forging the “new Britannia”
Them’s some big promises. Anyways, we brought you pictures of the rooms and the public areas last week; this week, it’s time to talk our experience. Did it live up to our (high) expectations?
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Inside The Belgraves: Thompson Hotels Cross The Pond
The holy day finally came! Yesterday, Thompson Hotels opened their first property outside the US: the Belgraves, in the heart of London's poshest nabe, Belgravia.
We were first (OK, technically seventh) through the doors last night, and emerged this morning. Details of our sleepover to come (let's just say it was both eventful and emotional), but today, we're letting you make up your own minds about the decor.
First, the public spaces. Belgraves is relatively small, with a lobby and Hix restaurant to seat 80 on the ground floor, and Mark's Bar on the mezzanine overhead. In a weird positioning, through a side door off the bar is the gym.
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Maybe You Can Get a Hotel Room in London for the Olympics After All?
For several months now we've heard that hotel rooms for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London were sold-out or going for ridiculously expensive rates. But according to the BBC, there may be room in town after all.
It turns out that about 8,000 hotel rooms, ranging from budget options to five-star, are no longer needed by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and have been put back on the market for the rest of the general public. Whee!
We hit up the Visit London site to look for hotel rooms during the first week of the games (July 27-August 3) and we found quite a few options available, although at predictably high prices. Two-star and three-star hotels were averaging about £260 a night while we found four-star hotels like the Hotel Indigo Paddington for £578 a night and the newly relaunched St. Ermin's Hotel for £467 a night. That's close to a $1,000 a night or about $7G if you plan on staying the whole week.
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The Belgraves: Less Than a Week From Opening
With just six days to go till Thompson crosses the pond and Belgraves opens (finally), we popped round this morning to see how things looked. Would they be on track?
Well, from the face of it, yes. The entrance, lobby and restaurant looked finished, down to artwork on the walls and tables laid for dinner. The hotel sign was affixed to the wall. The imposing doorway was in place. It all looked pretty much ready to go on the ground floor.
Then we looked up and saw what looked like unfinished rooms through the windows – some appeared to have curtains, some not. Will they open with all their rooms on Wednesday? We hope so, but it wouldn’t be a dealbreaker if they didn’t.
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Olympics Scam Crackdown Targets People Selling Fake Hotel Rooms
The Olympics site in Stratford, London
Remember when we told you about the ongoing crackdown on scalpers hawking non-legit Olympics tickets? Well, the local po-po (or, would that be bo-bo, since we're talking U.K. bobbies?) are going after delinquents selling fake hotel rooms, too.
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Could an Olympics Hotel Showdown be Brewing Between London and Paris?
Paris may have lost the 2005 Olympics bid to London, but the City of Light and Louis Vuitton is hoping to hand their 'cross-the-Chunnel metropolitan peers their comeuppance by stealing away tourists come summertime. According to a recently published report by express.co.uk, Pair-ee is being touted the " 'cheaper, safer and more attractive" alternative city from which to watch the 2012 Games.
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Quelle Surprise! Two More London Hotels to Open Pre-Games, but Nowhere Near Stratford
We've brought you news about the forthcoming opening of The Belgraves, capsule accommodations inside the Trocadero, and other newbies on the London hotel map, and today go-to publication The Guardian brings our attention to two more soon-to-be players on the scene.
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With All The Olympics Frenzy, We Can't Forget About The Queen (The Athenaeum Certainly Hasn't)
2012 is shaping up to be a huge year for London travel: there's the matter of a certain sporting event coming to town, and from June 2nd-5th, the city of perpetually grey skies will mark 60-years of Queen Elizabeth the II's rule during the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
The elaborate celebration fit for, well, a Queen, is set to include a pageant on the Thames River, the lighting of beacons 'round the world, special exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum, and a variety of neighborhood luncheons thrown by locals.
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Drinking Required A Paper Bag On The Savoy's Prohibition Night
January 17 1920 might not be one of those dates that’s rammed into your memory, possibly because most people like drinking and prefer to forget the bad times – but anyway, it’s the date that the Prohibition 18th Amendment was ratified.
And while a 92nd anniversary may be an odd one to celebrate, if there’s booze involved, it’s never too odd. So says the Savoy London, which turned its dark ‘n’ sexy Beaufort Bar into a Prohibition speakeasy for the night on Tuesday.
At the door, we were greeted by a lovely lady, Gemma, in a 1920s fascinator over her Savoy uniform. Once we gave her the password (Kaspar, if you please), she swept us past the velvet rope and into a booth paved with 48 karat gold. For realsies.
Instead of the normal menu, we got a gorgeous little Prohibition menu, offering six cocktails, three of which had been invented for Prohibition night, and another off-menu rum-based one that’s currently in the running for a competition to be the face of Bacardi.
The rules of the night: bottles would come in paper bags (our neighbors had champagne delivered like this), champagne would be served in special fluted goblets, and other cocktails would be poured into a tea cup from a proper tea pot. To experience as many set ups as possible (ahem), we tried four.
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Forget Gymnastics: Which London Hotels Are "Gold Medal Winners" for 2012?
Cue "God Save the Queen": The Daily Mail lists their top picks among London's hotel crop
Though there's no Olympics event that doles out medals for superior concierge service or Free WiFi, every Londoner's favorite guilty pleasure read, The Daily Mail, recently took the opportunity to anoint a handful of local hotels "gold medal" winners in the local accommodations scene.
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