Garden View Hotel

Wow, what a bad experience at Garden View Hotel!

I hope my English is good enough to read, because I'm from the Netherlands.

Monday we arrived at the hotel. Behind the desk sits a girl who's busy on the phone (calling with a friend or something private like that, it seems to me)

The girl behind the desk couldn't even smile or wish us a pleasant stay! No, only:" What do you want?" were her words...

When we said we reserved a room, we got a key placed before our nose:" You stay in room number one, down the hall, left" And that was it! Then of course, she quickly returned to her phone call!

Hmm... nice welcome, but ok let's go to the room.

Oh dear....... never seen such a little room!

Ok, it's only a two star hotel, but the looks of the room....

Our garden view, is a view to a bunch of wood and trash.

Hmm... closing the curtains helped that out of the way.

On the carpet are a lot of spots, doesn't look clean to me!

The paint stripes or still visible on the wooden door.

But again, that is maybe what a two star hotel room looks like, so I will stop about that.

Then the breakfast!!!

When we enter the breakfast room we have to wait outside because all tables are full.

Finally we can sit down. But just like the girl from the desk, the people who serve here can not be friendly or laugh!

With a grumpy face we get two bowls with cereal, milk, tea, really tiny glasses with orange juice, and four toasted sliced of bread (that's 2 bread for one grown up person!!).

The choice every day is: jam, jam, or.... jam???

Hmm.... I love to eat, but this... sorry but it doesn't fill my belly.

So with a hungry feeling I'm leaving the hotel for the first day of seeing London.

I almost forgot. Breakfast is being served until 9.30.

So at 9.25 a girl from the hotel sticks a key in the door of the dining room and locks it! Very friendly message for people who are too late! Is it too much to kindly tell people who are late that the breakfast is over instead of letting them wait for a closed door as they can see (through the window of the door) us still eating??!!

Every day when you leave the hotel, you have to leave a key at the desk. And none of the five days someone said a nice word (like thank you, or here you are..) when we left the key.

Then after five days we went home.

I was expecting the question:" Did you enjoy your stay??" And I was planning to answer honest that I did not like it.

But no question was asked...

Only:" We are leaving today"

"Hmm... ok!"

And that was it!

That was the pleasant goodbye from the garden view hotel!!

I'm glad that London was soooo great, so that makes up for the bad service at the garden view. But my advice: If you go to London, indeed Kensington is a great area to stay, but DON'T stay at the garden view (unless you're fund of no kindness...)

We booked the Garden View Hotel via the internet, and received a booking number, but when we got there they could not find our reservation!!!! After an hours arguing about getting a room or getting our prepaid money back, we finally got the world's smallest double room. This episode spoiled our first day in London, so we will never go back to this "no smile staff" hotel and we cannot recommend it to others!!!!!