Photo: londondrum.comSomebody needs to totally revamp the hotel rating system in London because if the Andaz can call itself a five then this is a six. The Royal Horseguards is a six. The Ritz is a seven. This is a proper 5-star hotel. This is the kind of place you’d take your partner if you were planning to propose. That’s how you really rate a great hotel: whether you’d propose to your partner in it, and whether it increases your chances of getting a yes.
While they’re busy taking down your details you can have a peer around the atrium and straight away you know it’s going to be great. At the time of writing there’s some seasonal music playing and everyone’s sitting round a huge Christmas tree waiting for their date, their mate or their taxi.
Photo: londondrum.comThe room is huge with a double bed, a three-seater sofa, an armchair, office chair, desk, coffee table, two side tables, a bedside table, TV cabinet and a couple more cabinets on top. The bathroom is probably bigger than the last bedroom I stayed at.
Let me have a root through the drawers and see what I can find… you get a couple of telephones, a safe, a minibar (I’ll tell you the prices in a minute), sewing kit, shoe shine kit, shoe horn, iron and ironing board, ice box with some actual ice in it, an umbrella, a couple of dressing gowns, a pair of slippers, a hairdryer… I think that’s about it.
Photo: londondrum.comOkay… now that we’ve got all of the boring items out of the way, let’s get down to the important stuff: the teabags. You get eight teabags, but six of them are peppermint, Chamomile and Earl Grey, so they don’t count. But seeing as they also supply you with a couple of hot chocolates and four biscuits I will let them off. If you prefer coffee then you get a little Nespresso machine and a few complimentary capsules.
The minibar prices aren’t too bad, provided that you stick with the soft drinks. A can of Coke is only a couple of quid, and the Kit-Kat is two quid fifty. The little fun-size bottles of whiskey are £6.50, whilst a half-bottle of champagne will set you back £30 – so make sure that you have something to celebrate first. You don’t want to blow thirty quid on champagne only for your partner to say no. So here’s my advice: propose first… then buy the champagne. Or even better: buy the champagne, drink the champagne, then propose, then buy them a Kit-Kat. When they query the romance of a Kit-Kat just tell them that it cost you £2.50 – which is double the price it is in the shops.
Photo: londondrum.comIn the bathroom you get a shower and a bath, some soap, some more soap, even more soap, enough towels to soak up the sea, and a vase of white gravel which might be bath salt but to be perfectly honest I haven’t got a clue so I’d better not drop it in the bath.
I’ve just found a leaflet about massages and spas. Apparently I can order an ‘Advanced performance facial for men’ for £65 quid, which is clinically proven to combat the ‘harsh, ageing effects of shaving’. Luckily that doesn’t apply to me because I’m too lazy to shave anyway. So maybe I can go for a ‘Face and body sensation’ instead which ‘rapidly accelerates skin repair and restores youthful radiance’. I have just one response to that: no. It’s not happening. Not ever. No way. Not in a million years. I would honestly rather die than do any of those.
Like most 5-star hotels you also get a load of arty books on the coffee table but I don’t think they’re actually intended for reading because they’re always highbrow stuff like ‘French fashion during the Renaissance’ or ‘Armchair fabrics from the 1720s’. Today I’ve got a big book about Zen and some catwalk photography by Lucian Perkins. I think they just pick the biggest and heaviest books they can find so nobody tries to nick them.
The bar and restaurant are just about the best that you could wish for. The dining room has red leather seats and chandeliers, and the staff are so good looking that they actually distract you from your dinner. It’s run by Marco Pierre White who’s a bit like Gordon Ramsey… only scarier. You can tell it’s his place because he’s decorated it with giant rock ‘n’ roll-style photographs of himself with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
I only ever eat the breakfast in these places but they’ve got a menu all day – even for breakfast. You shuffle in still half-asleep and they sit you down and hand you a leather bound book with about ten pages in it. I saw English Breakfast on the first page so that was fine with me. I’ll just have one of those please, mate. Five minutes later he came back carrying a wagon wheel loaded up with about a tonne of food: sausages, bacon, beans, black pudding, giant mushrooms, giant tomatoes, scrambled eggs and a rack of toast… normally I just have a bowl of cornflakes in the morning and this was like a three-course meal. You won’t have to eat for the rest of the day.
The hotel’s location is great too. You’ll find it down Threadneedle Street, about two minutes from the Bank of England. The nice thing about Threadneedle Street is that it’s always heaving with people during the week because it’s in the middle of financial district, but come the early hours of the weekend it’s almost deserted. Hardly anybody lives in The City because it’s all offices and shops, so if you get up early enough then you can walk around the Royal Exchange, St. Paul’s and the Guildhall in the company of a few pigeons.
So to sum it all up, then… I think I’ve just found my new favourite hotel. It’s a toss up between this one and the Royal Horseguards. (The Ritz will forever be a class apart, so it’s unfair comparing them to that.) If you want a hotel that’s posh, but not posh enough to make you feel uncomfortable, then here it is.
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How to get to Threadneedles Hotel
| Fare zone | Cash | Oyster & Contactless | Travelcard | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single fare | Single fare | Daily cap | One day | ||||
| Peak | Off-peak | Peak | Off-peak | Anytime | Off-peak | ||
| Bus | n/a | £1.75 | £5.25 | £6 | |||
| Train (zone 1) | £7 | £2.90 | £2.80 | £8.90 | £8.90 | £16.60(zone 1-4) | £16.60(zone 1-6) |
| Train (zone 1-2) | £7 | £3.50 | £2.90 | £8.90 | £8.90 | ||
| Train (zone 1-3) | £7 | £3.80 | £3.10 | £10.50 | £10.50 | ||
| Train (zone 1-4) | £7 | £4.60 | £3.40 | £12.80 | £12.80 | ||
| Train (zone 1-5) | £7 | £5.20 | £3.60 | £15.30 | £15.30 | £23.60(zone 1-6) | |
| Train (zone 1-6) | £7 | £5.80* | £3.80* | £16.30 | £16.30 | ||
| * Journeys between zone 1 and Heathrow are always charged at the peak rate. Prices are correct as of | |||||||
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