I don't have AC at home (Spain) but I don't go to hotels without it in summer, anywhere. Why ? Because I cannot know for sure how the exact location of my room will be...I don't know if I can open the window, I don't know if sun will be shining on my window all day...and maybe it is a tiny room and I'm sharing it with a friend...I don't take the risk and search for AC. Maybe I don't need it..but I don't want to be uncomfortable during my holidays :)

Chimani, may be from London, but these are only posts he has ever made about the city. Maybe the heat has fried his brain and he just doesn't know how ro be civil anymore.

Now about the question - London is not that hot that often, but when it is it can be VERY uncomfortable. Unfortunately - even a/c may not be the answer. Many add-on a/c units just aren't like the cold forced air you may be used to. So if cool/cold rooms are important to you be sure to book a hotel w/ a/c, but don't expect the same results as at home.

oh, I was wrong -158 posts and 4 are about London/UK -

I have an elderly friend who moved here from England when she was in her 20s, so probably 60 years ago. When she moved here (Washington) she did not have any summer clothes because in England the temperatures seldom got warm enough to require two wardrobes. Thats a indication of how much the weather in England has changed.
I find a problem in London in the summer is the difficulty getting cold drinks. Ice can be harder to find than air conditioning.

I know everyone says that about the UK but I don't get it...I've never had a problem getting ice when I want it? Usually when you order a drink you are asked if you want ice.

nona1

Yeah, creeping Americanism...

"Thats a indication of how much the weather in England has changed."

It's very tempting to draw great lessons about climate change from a few anecdotes. But Victorian and Edwardian novels are stuffed with references to how stiflingly hot central London was even as far back as the end of the 19th century. And we were sleeping in our Islington garden 30 years ago one summer things got particularly bad.

Central London's microclimate created a static miasma of smoke in Tudor times, of smog in Victorian times and of occasional unpleasant heat during some recent summers. Some buildings - like the classic "Georgian" terrace and some Edwardian mansion blocks - deal with our occasional weather extremities reasonably well.

Others - above all post WW2 office blocks and hotels, and the Tube - don't Which is why we are often a lot less aware of how awful London can get than visitors who've had to cope with a hotel room whose window won't open.

Having commuted into London by m/c, car, train and tube over 20 years, I now live in South France.

I work in UK about 12 times per year. The temperature is normally about 10C below that at home, but the humidity is much higher in summer. It feels sticky for the first couple of days.

I sleep with the windows open and turn the AC off in hotels.

Even Londoners suffer in the tube in August. But it is not in the same humidity league as Detroit, Atlanta, Singapore, Bangkok, KL, etc.

Peter

Because you say the END of August I would make a bet that you will not be roasting hot. For the past couple of years the hot weather came in June and July. . .

Ah - some sanity at last from mpprh.

As for janisj - clearly an expert - do tell how long you have stayed in London (fat chance of getting a response to that). Well I don't post answers to questions about London because:

(a) most of them are about 5 star hotels about which I know nothing. I lived there - I wasn't a tourist.

(B) or about where to eat expensively - again I lived there I wasn't a tourist.

When push comes to shove what you guys want is info that you can trust - from people like yourselves who have been to London once or twice and are experts.

Fair enough, you want to stay and eat in places recommended by others and which you can then describe in detail to your friends at home.

Ditto all the usual haunts - Stonehenge, Oxford, Cambridge, Stratford, blurb, blurb.

You can't go home and say you haven't seen them. The fact that there are far more interesting places to see (especially in the North of what is a very small country) is neither here nor here.

So I don't respond unless something really irks or really interests - you do occasionally get people who think outside the square.

chimani: Not that you actually warrant a response - but - you obviously haven't been paying much attention:
1) There are almost NO questions on here about 5 star hotels
2) Almost NO questions are about how ro eat expensively
and
3) I lived in England for 5 years and go back to the UK 1 - 3 times a year averaging 2 - 4 weeks each trip, sometimes longer.

5 star hotels ? I almost don't know of the existance of such a thing....