I am taking my 72-year-old mother and my 10-year-old daughter to London next week. I have scoured all of zone one and some of zone two and have settled on these locations. I have booked at least six hotels (using pay later cancel before check-in type reservations)and canceled them all varying from Premier Inn Southwark and Premier Inn County Hall to Park Plaza County hall and Park Plaza Westminster.
The issue is because my mother can’t walk too far I have only been looking for hotels that were near fully accessible stations that either had a lift or escalators and no mandatory stairs. The hotel either needed to be within two blocks of the station or a bus stop needs to be directly in front of the hotel that could take us to the nearest tube station in less than 10 minutes.
I was trying to keep the price under $300 per night and it needed to sleep three people. I have seen rooms varying from what appears to be probably a queen size bed even though they call it a king size in the UK and a pullout sofa, to rooms that are a double which is a full size bed here and a pullout. Finding a room with a true king, proves to be very hard, even after scouring all Google and Tripadvisor reviews and pictures and YouTube videos.
It looks like I will be sharing a bed with my mother and putting my daughter on the pullout couch, so just trying to understand what others would do in this situation. Does it make more sense to choose the higher end hotel with the Park Plaza Riverbank to get the twin room or ‘king’ bed room or go with the residence Inn that is near Earl’s Court even though the bed is a double. Having a fridge and food prep area seems useful and the room seems to be 1-2 sq meters larger. Plus access to a washer and dryer!
At this point, I can’t find a hotel that I like that is within walking distance of a tube station that keeps our travel distance time down to something reasonable. As this trip will take us all the way from Harry Potter studio tour to the British Museum to the Tower of London to Canary wharf to Greenwich Village, it’s really hard to say that any place is really close to anything without truly staying centrally.
And because a lot of the tube stations don’t have step free access when exiting, to avoid those stations we will be taking the bus a lot anyway so it just made sense to just stay at a hotel where getting a bus is convenient even if it wasn’t walking distance to a tube station because we’ll have to be taking the bus a lot on this trip regardless. The prospect of saving $100-$400 is very temping by staying at Residence inn even with the smaller bed.
Edit: My mother has already ordered herself a walker that has a seat off of Amazon because she can walk, but she just can’t walk for long without needing to take a break.
