Zetter Townhouse Hotel, Clerkenwell, London

There's a spring in my step. Clerkenwell is my favourite part of London. I used to live here. The name comes from the Clerks' Well (in Farringdon Road), cobblestones are still in evidence, and office workers hurry beneath St John's Gate, once the entrance to the Priory of the Knights of St John.

Zetter Townhouse
49-50 St John's Square, Clerkenwell, London
EC1V 4JJ
020-7324 4567
thezettertownhouse.com


From £185 room only

The 13-room Zetter Townhouse on St John's Square is a new project from Mark Sainsbury and Michael Benyan, who opened the original Zetter hotel just across the square in 2004. I may have stayed there once, can't remember – but its restaurant has always been a place to see and be seen.

This area is quiet at weekends. You can walk to Spitalfields or the British Museum, or catch a bus to Columbia Road flower market. Even nightclubbing can be done on foot. Ditto restaurants – Moro, St John, Club Gascon, more recently Bruno Loubet at the Zetter and the Modern Pantry, next door, and the paint is still wet at a new Bistro du Vin on St John Street.

The light-blue front door leads straight into the cocktail lounge, where designer Russell Sage has taken no prisoners. Miss Havisham meets Ms Westwood. Over a bottle of absinthe. One long room is bar (which does good snacks such as courgette fritters, roast head of garlic, charcuterie), hotel lounge and breakfast room. Framed needlepoint, velvet couches, polished oak, a stag's head, stuffed birds in a Victorian glass case, and – a triumph of taxidermy this – a parasol-wielding cat in a crinoline. The bar is fashioned as an apothecary's dispensary. Staff wear rustic cotton jackets and neckerchiefs. Any minute now, surely, they will burst into a well-loved tune from Oliver!

A trip to the basement games room (3D TV, Wii, table tennis) reveals a glimpse of 16th-century priory wall. Then up, up, to my room at the top. You can open the windows – always good. Love the bedhead – from gaudy fairground reclamation. A marble-trimmed bath sits in a gold mosaic'd niche and there's a purple-tinted Buddha's head in the fireplace. A blue and red abstract on the chimney breast is signed Richard Hamnet Expo 67. Shower, loo and hanging space are shoehorned into a brick red en suite, and I have everything I need, including teeny tubes of REN eye and cleansing gels.

Wi-Fi is free (hurrah!), and I can order grub here or downstairs from Bruno Loubet's kitchen. The minibar is a veritable curiosity shoppe of brown-bottled bitters and pre-mixed cocktails, but I'm off out to a drinks party. When I return, the lounge is heaving with a private pre-opening event (the London Cocktail Society, what else?). I flop upstairs and order small portions of comfort food. A mug of soup (butternut squash with maple croutons) and a little bowl of risotto.

Gosh is it that time already? Wish I could buy more time in bed this wonderful morning. It only happens once every few years, but when I come across A Real Hotel for Girls, it makes the schlep utterly worthwhile.

• Breakfast (a beautiful buffet) £13.50. Brunch menu at weekends
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Antequera Golf Hotel

Friendly, competent reception staff. Large,clean well appointed room overlooking terrace with swimming pool.(Spa & indoor pool available, but not tried - seemed popular, though). Buffet style restaurant may not be everyone's idea of 4 * hotel, but we found the food, both breakfast and dinner to be good quality with plenty of choice of Spanish, european and English dishes. Staff were friendly and courteous but were obviously under pressure at peak times - lack of planning by Management, for these periods perhaps? Location was a 10 - 15 mins walk to town centre, 25 mins uphill to old town.[source]

Bloc, Birmingham - Hotels Review

Some might argue that Birmingham's new capsule hotel doesn't really offer penthouse luxury, but few could quibble with its rock-bottom prices

 Exterior and lobby of Bloc, Birmingham

The Bloc Hotel Birmingham is located in Birmingham, United Kingdom

• 200 meters from St. Paul's Church
• 1.2 kilometers from Birmingham
• 12 kilometers from Birmingham Intl. Airport (BHX)
• 1.2 kilometers from Birmingham New Street Station
• 300 meters from Red Palace
• 400 meters from Birmingham Telecom Tower (Post Office Tower)
• 600 meters from Museum of the Jewellery Quarter
• 600 meters from St Chad's Cathedral

Penthouse proposition, pavement price, says the press blurb for the 73-room Bloc hotel. The concept is based on Japanese capsule hotels, but the construction technique, by a company called Boxbuild, is unusual. Boxbuild manufactured the rooms off-site then stacked them in situ so the hotel exterior could be wrapped round them.

Fundamental to the idea is eliminating unnecessary space (so that rooms can be more densely packed into the site). Research showing that hotel guests rarely unpack an overnight bag (that puts me in a minority, then) has resulted in "space hungry" wardrobes being replaced by something called an "integrated bag storage area".

Bloc hotel claims to have arrived at "the perfect combination of luxury and price", which includes use of "significant" sound insulation, luxurious cotton sheets, Italian ambient lighting and aircon set at an environment-sensitive 18-20C and 40% humidity.

The taxi driver at Birmingham New Street station isn't exactly sure where the hotel is – so we go for a spin round an unexpectedly lovely Georgian square, St Paul's, with a handsome church in the middle, until we spot a grey, modern cube. Bloc it says, in tall (small) letters.

This is the kind of urban location I love – the developers are moving in but a tattily beautiful Victorian and Georgian legacy remains. Hello, the builders are still here, polishing the floor. Lobby seating is so low it cannot be negotiated with decency in a dress, and surely someone has forgotten to put legs on the coffee tables? A Nespresso machine, MTV on a large screen and Hannah, the cheery receptionist at a white desk, complete the look.
bloc bedroom

I take myself and a cup of tea (there are also cold drinks and snacks from vending machines) up to the second floor. A bed, the exact width of the room (or maybe the room is the exact width of the bed) has been slotted between a padded wall and a large sealed window. The shower room is a cubicle behind smoked glass with a monsoon showerhead set into the ceiling, plus a loo and tiny basin. It's so neat I try the basin immediately. A little shower water splashes on to the loo roll but miraculously not on to the shelf with my toiletries. Bathroom lighting may be Italian but it's rubbish for doing make-up.

My bag stows beneath the bed. The wardrobe substitute is three shallow pegs on the wall but not a single hanger. I've got a black-tie do to go to tonight – what am I supposed to do with my frock?

Laptop, camera and my rapidly cooling cup of tea fit on the (single) bedside table (seating is a padded cube). There are plenty of sockets, free Wi-Fi (good show) and a blackout rollerblind at the window.

This is what I call a sensory-deprivation hotel. No fresh air, no art or colourful textiles, no armchair and just enough space (it would be snug with two people).

The bed is surprisingly comfy, I'm pleased to report, though I wouldn't describe the sheet as luxurious. Morning tea necessitates a trip to the lobby, and breakfast a long wait (nothing opens till 10am). The point is, you won't come here to luxuriate; you'll come because it is cheap – and who can argue with clean comfort in a big city for as little as 30 quid?

Bloc hotel pretty much does what it says it will but the real bonus is the staff – Hannah and her friendly, efficient Brummie colleagues. They know the area, they give Bloc a sense of place and they inject some much-needed character. [source]

St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, King's Cross, London

From the Hogwartsian Booking Office restaurant to the beautiful cantilevered staircase and soaring gothic windows, England's finest railway hotel is on the right track

St Pancras Renaissance Hotel 

Euston Road, King's Cross,

London

NW1 2AR

020-7841 3540 

stpancrasrenaissance.co.uk 

From £300 room-only

The tinkle of distant dropped cutlery echoes around an expanse of brick and glass. We are eating in the Booking Office. Yes – the old booking hall of St Pancras station, now reconfigured as hotel restaurant and cocktail bar.

More than £150m has been spent reinventing the ticket office as bar, forecourt as lofty reception (currently filled with clouds of cherry blossom) and, most importantly, breathing new life into England's finest railway hotel.

As a student, I remember passing the former Midland Grand, its pointy towers and arched windows part fairytale, part schlock-horror set. A collision of fantasy and function on the Euston Road. The hotel closed almost 80 years ago and decades later only narrowly avoided demolition.

Thank God it's still here, Tania and I agree, settling back against black leather, as self-satisfied as cigar-puffing grandees in a gentlemen's club. The Hogwartsian space is cleverly divided and lit just right, so we are aware only of the undulating beauty of oak linenfold panelling and heavy glass lamps in our own "bit", not overwhelmed by the soaring gothic windows, or the sheer distance from the far end of the room.

"You can have a glass of Bolly for £13," says Tania. "And that's a good white." She points at La Croix Vermentino sauvignon blanc, £5.25 a glass. "Pity they only have whites from Castello Banfi, though."

Then, "Proper peasanty," she says, scooping coarse duck terrine on to sourdough toast while I spoon up pea and ham soup. We follow with roast fillet of seabass and a little fricassee of peppers and mushrooms. "Simple, subtle, but delicious," she says.

The public areas of Sir George Gilbert Scott's Victorian masterpiece are simply mesmerising. The stone cantilevered staircase, curved hallways of Minton tiles and unexpectedly decorative, jewel-coloured pattern and illustration on walls, cornices and ceilings all carefully, lovingly restored.

There are 38 suites in the original building and a further 207 rooms in a new annexe, Barlow House. Those rooms are not a bad size, if unexciting (and I'd advise an upper floor). At this scale, though, it is impossible to avoid creeping corporateness – even in the suites. Mine is comfortable for sure, with a marble bathroom (REN products in a glass-lidded box), office area, heavy sunburst mirror, easy chairs positioned for gazing across the giant Olympic symbol to Platform 9 and Eurostar. Wi-Fi is free (but only in the suites) and marks for not being too snobbish to provide tea- and coffee-making things, too. Just because I have the services of a butler doesn't mean I want to rack up room service bills.

I am less keen on being woken at 7am by a platform announcement (not sure it would be any quieter facing Euston Road – especially as double glazing isn't allowed for the listed windows) but, hey, it's fun watching everyone scurrying about below. Even though, since my stay, Marcus Wareing has opened his Gilbert Scott Brasserie, designed by David Collins, in the former hotel entrance hall and coffee room, and stolen all the thunder, I urge you to make time for coffee, if nothing else, in the Booking Office. It is surely the most inspiring new public space in London. [source]