I will be spending two nights in London at the end of November and I am seeking hotel suggestions. I will be travelling with my 8 year old daughter and will be arriving at night as we are taking a day flight. I am most interested in convenience to Heathrow due to the late arrival London time and also our need to go back to the airport a day later to continue our flight to Zurich. Thanks.

We stayed at the Paddington Hilton hotel; which is right at the train station. You don't even have to go outside, their is a footbridge to it. Check out londontown.com for a better price then on their web site. The train from Heathrow goes right to Paddington station.

Sometimes your airline carrier can make you a good deals on London Hotels. British Airways gave me a deal of 4 nights during mid-December @ $632 all in (inc full breakfast) at the Millennium Gloucester & Conference Center **** got relatively good ratings via tripadvisor. Local attractions include: Kensington Palace & Gardens, Earls Court & Olympia, Exhibition Centres, Natural History Museum, Science Museum, Victoria & Albert Museums. Shopping districts include: Harrods, Harvey Nichols Shopping on the exclusive King's Road and High Street Kensington. And for you it's * 2 mins *walk from the Piccidilly line. No need to change when you come in from Heathrow and you can go straight to the airport. Ebay is doing a auction at the moment for one night. Apparently it's supposed to be legit! I've won the most recent auction - I called the hotel and said the voucher would work, however, you have to make sure that the night you want isn't a convention night when the hotel might be full. Anyways, you can always use other discount providers. Good Luck!

Added: Journey from Heathrow to Gloucester Road apparently takes about 45 mins via train ~ but remember once you're in town you're in... Heathrow area hotels aren't v. pretty. You only have 2 days, imvho I would try and make the most of it. You don't want to worry about travelling back to the hotel after you've had a hard day of walking around seeing all the sites and having afternoon tea etc.

http://www.london-hotels.co.uk/glouc...ad-london.html

Have Fun!

Thank you both so much for your suggestions. Certainly being on the Piccadilly line seems the way to go. I'll check out the e-bay listing too (I love ebay and have purchased other lodgings) as well as my airline.

Sue Coan

Thanks again for the suggestions. The e-bay listing was gone but there was a great small Paris apartment that I'm considering for the end of our trip. I am wondering if anyone knows of the Ibis City Hotel. I reviewed it on the above London-Hotels link. It seems quite inexpensive but clean and convenient

Hi again! There's another ebay auction just coming to an end, but I noticed somebody has put a negative feedback because he couldn't get the date he wanted. I called the hotel and luckily my dates don't cause a problem, also my parents have up to a year to us it. Anyways, Ibis City Hotel, it's in east London? When you say convenient I presume it's because one of the places you want to visit is the Tower of London? Other than that, I wouldn't put this as a great place to stay in or to get back to Heathrow quickly. What's your criteria, budget etc?

Bloomsbury is a nice central area, with Tube access to Heathrow. One nice aspect is that there are quite a few B&Bs in that area. For example, near Russell Sq. Tube, I've stayed at the Harlingford Hotel (note, called hotel but is B&B), and a couple of others on the same street. About 2 blocks from Tube Stn that runs to HRW. There are also some large hotels nearby of tourist, and above, grade.

Another Bloomsbury fan here - the area is convenient to a lot. I stayed at the Morgan Hotel in June and was quite pleased with it; our twin room was £110/night, but as Michel_Paris pointed out, there are lots of options in the area. What is your actual budget, and how late will your flight get in? I believe the tube stops running sometime around midnight, so if it's later than that you may need to stay at Heathrow or look into a car service.

I would not stay near Paddington or in the City (area near St Paul's/Tower). Neither is very convenient to the Piccadilly line, and though there are trains from LHR to Paddington, the trains are expensive and Paddington is not near much of interest to tourists.

Thanks for your suggestions I will refocus on Bloomsbury. We arrive at 8:40 in the evening so I expect with getting though customs we will be on our way by 10:00. I would like to pay $100-125 as we won't be doing anything but sleeping there.

I guess I am confused as Sue878 indicated that the Heathrow train goes right to Paddington?

There are two ways to get into town from Heathrow via public transit. The Piccadilly line (dark blue) of the Underground (tube) goes directly from Heathrow into central London and anywhere else the Piccadilly line goes. This is the cheapest option with two people. The Heathrow Express and Heathrow Connect are train services (think regular overland trains, not Underground) which run from Heathrow to Paddington station. These are more expensive - I think around £15, though I haven't checked recently - and get you only as far as Paddington, which means that unless you're staying near Paddington you still have to find a bus, tube or taxi to take you where you need to go.

For tourists, Paddington is not the most central location. (It's not horrible, but it's not great in terms of proximity to anything touristy.) Almost anything you want to see will require a bus and/or tube ride. Not the end of the world for someone who's there a week, but with 24 hours in the city I'd want to spend as little time in transit as possible. Which is exactly why I like Bloomsbury - you can walk to a lot!

$100-125 will be tough, but you can try Priceline and probably get something (tons of threads on here about how). Or try londontown.com, which lets you see exactly which hotel you'd be booking. I got the Holiday Inn Bloomsbury, at Russell Square, for £90 this summer on Londontown, which is around your budget if not quite there. Or, there are a lot of b&bs/small hotels around Gower Street and in the rest of Bloomsbury.

Thanks so much, jent103, for clarifying the travel in from Heathrow. It all makes sense to me now! Thanks also for the londontown link - I'm going to give that a try.