Hotel along Jubilee Line

Last summer my girlfriend (of 48 years)and I stayed at the Quality Inn on Frognal in Hampstead. (No road or street appended, just Frognal).

The hotel is within walking distance of the Finchley Road tube station which is a stop on the Jubilee and the Metropolitan lines.

The hotel was ok and fairly small at 57 rooms. Nothing great, but comfotable enough as pint sized rooms go. We at least had our own bathroom with a shower. The breakfast was fair to middling.

The big drawback was that we found no good restaurant in the area. The best bet was to go to a food store and buy the biggest sandwich on the shelf and eat it in the room!

There was a store with a wine chiller, but the darn thing took until breakfast to cool anything. We ended up bribing the bar keeper at the hotel for a bucket of ice.

We did try the Northstar pub down the road, but it was more of a sports bar.

There was an internet place close by. But it was often crowded.

Here is the location. You can find it with google.

Quality Hotel Hampstead
5 Frognal, Hampstead, London, Greater London, NW3 6AL

the dumb guys did not list a phone number. sso I don't know how to call them.

There was an internet machine in the hotel, but the cost was prohibitive.
It devoured £2 coins like a T-Rex chomping on a Triceratops carcass.
I had to keep telling myself that each time I put one those funny money coins in the maw of the critter, I was stuffing it with $2.00 about every 20 minutes.

I could have soon bought the hotel.

Bob_brown has given you info about a hotel (that doesn't sound that great to me)

But I personally would stay somewhere near the Baker Street tube station. This station is on 4 different tube lines including the Jubilee, is across from Regent's park, has lots of hotels in all price ranges w/i walking distance. There are also many restaurants and pubs nearby.

I can't give you a specific hotel recommendation since I haven't stayed in that area - but have used that tube station many times.

oh - that first sentence sounded like a knock on bob_brown. Not intended. Should have said he gave you a line on a convenient hotel for the Jub. line. But there are better areas also on the Jubilee line.

Do you have a budget or preferred hotel type? There's many places along the Jubilee line you could stay - even right in town if you wanted. What's the commuting time you're prepared to put up with?

I've travelled there a few times already and stayed in the Bond Street area (two different Radisson Edwardians) and in Central London (Royal Horseguards). The areas have been great for restaurants. I'm trying to cut the commute down and keep the cost to around £100-125 per night.

There's not an easy answer I'm afraid. Beyond Baker Street you're getting into residential areas that aren't big on hotels. Any hotels there are tend to be stuck on their own on busy roads with no local attractive amenities.

If you want to cut commute time down, then West Hamstead (West End Lane) has the best options for eating/drinking, although it's not big on hotels. There's a Marriott about 3/4 of a mile from West Hampstead (I think it might be called Marriott West Hampstead - but it's not as close to the centre of West Hampstead as it could be), but this may be a bit too far for you to walk?

There's a newly opened Holiday Inn Express on the Finchley Road, right opposite the station. Finchley Road is a very busy express way out of London which has a mall type thing with cinemas, a sushi bar and some pretty grim american style eateries. You could always stay here and then tube it one stop to West Hampstead to eat in the evenings.

The Marriott Maida Vale is not in beautiful posh Maida Vale but in dodgy scruffy old Kilburn, so don't stay here even though it looks posh on the website. I should know, I live in Kilburn.

I think for the extra 10-15 mins journey, you'd be best off staying nr Bond Street or Baker Street.

... many thanks... I truly do enjoy coming over so much.

I went to the hotel described above because I had little choice. We arrived at the hotel where I had a reservation about 5 pm on a Friday. When I checked in, I learned that the hotel was having a "plumbing problem" and my room was affected. I could not stay in it. The Quality Inn was offered as an alternative.

Before I accepted the alternative, I visited other hotels nearby and could not find a vacancy anywhere. So we took the alternative just to have a place to stay. The price was right and it cost us nothing extra to be driven to it in a limosine.

You are right, the alternative hotel wasn't great. But it wasn't that bad either. Given that we got a rock bottom price because of the inconvenience, I did not object.

My main objection was the lack of a good place to eat. The Finchley Road tube station was an easy walk from the hotel, and the Metropolitan line and the Jubilee line are both flyers. We got to central London quickly.

At least the pizza take-out was better than your average cardboard. And the big sandwiches at the food market were nice and thick with fresh ingredients.

It gave me an excuse to load up on goodies at the bakery. My system needed them because of the stress of being in a motel on Frognal whatever it was. The bakery was really quite good. It wasn't Paris, but not bad at all.

We hardly starved.

Girl friend of 48 (!) years??

Would you care to elaborate??

Sure, I like her lots.
Always did, from the first date onwards.
What's wrong with having the same girl friend for 48 years?

I'll bet you haven't had one that long.

My dear, I'm quite sure after 48 years she's no longer a girl, more of a lady friend.

My dear, I'm quite sure after 48 years she's no longer a girl, more of a lady friend.

As for Frognal, that hotel is practically on the main road - Finchley road - and is grotty in both aspect and supposed quality. You can do much much better than that.

Let me respond to mkingdom2.

First, if I choose think of her as a girl, that is my business. It sure as @%@#$# is not yours! I will call her and refer to her what I choose. Moreover, she has no objections.

Besides, age has nothing to do with it.
You never met her, so butt out.

And, were you more perceptive, you might have picked up on a very key fact that should be painfully obvious to all but the obtuse. But since your aren't quite tuned in, I will not burden you with the details.

Also, the hotel is NOT right in the main road. Noise from Finchley Road did not bother us. The hotel is up the hill and removed from it. I don't exactly live in a pig sty at home, and I did not find the hotel to be grotty as you say in that it was dirty or unsanitary. It was clean to the point that I had no objections to it.

The staff members were very nice but, as is the case in many London hotels, they were not British. The night staffers were from Poland but all spoke decent English.

I think you don't know the place any more than you know my girl friend, who she is, or what she has done in her career.