Crowne Plaza St James - A Great London Hotel Happy to See You

Advantages: Great Location. Excellent standard of service. Relatively good value for London.
Disadvantages: No Pool. That's about it!

...INTRODUCTION I booked dinner and theatre for my wife's thirtieth birthday, and needed a relatively up-market hotel in London - with a bit of ?wow? factor - to overnight in. I am a frequent visitor to IC Hotel Group properties on business (these include the five star Intercontinental Hotels, the four to five star Crowne Plaza, and the three to four star Holiday Inn) and am a member of their award-winning ?Priority Club? loyalty scheme, so I decided to use my accumulated points to redeem a ?Reward Night? and stay for free. The hotel is on Buckingham Gate, with extensive frontage featuring an attractive red and white brick façade with decorative arches, reminiscent of Florentine architecture. GETTING TO & FROM The hotel is in the heart of Westminster. It?s a short, three minute, walk from St James? Park Tube...

Hishyeness 20.04.2009 (14.05.2009) · Read review
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Review of Crowne Plaza London St James, London

Afternoon Tea at Browns Restaurant and Bar

Advantages: Good value afternoon tea
Disadvantages: Slow service

...Recently one of my favourite things is afternoon tea. You would think that living in London it would be easy to find somewhere to have tea and scones. Living in London it is usually fairly easy to find whatever food I feel like eating, no matter how exotic that food is but it seems that finding somewhere where you can have afternoon tea that doesn't cost upwards of £25 is close to impossible! I was even considering paying the £38 that it costs to have afternoon tea at the ritz but fortunately before I managed to book a table a friend of mine suggested we have afternoon tea at Browns. I agreed, thinking that she meant the hotel and that I would still be paying over £30 for tea. Fortunately the place she had in mind was Browns Restaurant and Bar, not Browns hotel. It has now become a regular thing for me and my friend to meet...

Brooke3 06.07.2009 · Read review
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Review of Browns Restaurant, London

London Bridges by James Patterson

Advantages: Alex Cross genre
Disadvantages: no disadvantages

...London Bridges by James Patterson is a novel featuring Alex Cross as an FBI agent. This is one of many of James Patterson's characters and he is teamed once again in the book with the Wolf and Weasel characters. The story really begins with the evacuation of a town in Middle America and the town then being exploded apart by the character of the Wolf with assistance from the Weasel. There is then a meeting involving the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, etc to find out what happened. The Wolf who tells them that he is holding them to ransom, along with Britain, France and anyone else he feels like it contacts them. Thus begins the story of London Bridges, not a fast paced novel but a moving novel all the same. It leads you on twists and turns in America, Britain and France chasing after the Wolf and his associates to prevent...

SMRobinsonHudson 11.05.2007 · Read review
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Review of London Bridges - James Patterson

LONDON'S CALLING

Advantages: Pleasent stay, good food, central location
Disadvantages: Views from room

...were still unimpressed with the brightness. So on went the remaining five lights and it becomes an acceptable level of light to read by. The room is decorated in brown/beige striped wallpaper and as said has several lamps around the room. Sitting on the-what appeared to be nine draw side is the TV (swivels round). The TV was a story of its own? The curtains and bed covering is a pleasant blue check design, while the carpet is a brown check design and unappealing in my opinion. Let?s look out the window?.Wow what a view! Three further walls of the hotel and a load of rubbish set on a blue roof below. A total mess and this let the hotel down somewhat. The nine draw cabinet is in fact on a three draw one. Pull the top draw on either side and you reveal a cupboard, one of which holds your tea/coffee making facilities (passed criteria test 2...

dabmim 28.03.2003 · Read review
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Review of The Strand Palace Hotel, London

LONDON BRIDGE IS FALLING DOWN

Advantages: -
Disadvantages: -

...step ahead of Cross and the FBI there was a feeling of inevitability that he would not be captured and stopped in time. Maybe, just maybe though, the Wolfs penchant for blowing up famous bridges might just prove to be his undoing. ?People ought to feel comfortable going about their lives, knowing that their government is doing everything humanly possible to disrupt any potential activity that the evil ones may try to inflict upon us.? London Bridges marks the seventh outing for Alex Cross and our hero has still got what it takes to keep the reader turning the pages in eager anticipation. The beauty of this book is that it can be picked up and enjoyed either by a die hard fan of James Patterson?s Alex Cross series or a complete newcomer to the collection, there is just the right level of information at the beginning of the book to...

stuleg 19.01.2005 · Read review
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Review of London Bridges - James Patterson

A Little London Luxury

Advantages: The room, The location, The reception service
Disadvantages: The breakfast

...are usually too restrictive to be useful, but I investigated further and found that there was a room available for the weekend we wanted it, on the spring break rate and in a good, central London location - at the Crowne Plaza St James. The offer rate was valid for standard rooms only (rather than superior rooms or suites) and began at £60 per night including breakfast for up to two adults, varying up to around £100 per night for those hotels that had higher non-offer rates; we paid £95 a night for our room. To me, this still seems like quite a lot of money, but a quick search on google showed that staying in the nearest Holiday Inn (incidentally, part of the same chain as Crowne Plaza and usually much more budget-friendly) for the same weekend would have actually cost more! More to the point, the normal room rate for a standard room...

Collingwood21 01.06.2008 · Read review
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Review of Crowne Plaza Hotel St. James, London

Stranded in London!

Advantages: Excellent central location; good bars and restaurants
Disadvantages: Rooms a bit old fashioned; a little pricey

..." - the inner courtyard of the hotel with the humming air conditioners at the bottom. I can live (or sleep) with that, but there was also an awful rattling, like pipes, coming from somewhere in the ceiling. We went back downstairs to complain, and were told there were no other rooms. After standing our ground they eventually checked us in to an alternative room on the 4th floor. A little bigger, but still not brilliant - probably "average", from past business stays down in London hotels. The reception staff weren't particularly friendly, as other reviews have mentioned. Despite being "club" rooms, all that appeared to be different was the decor. Instead of old-fashioned wall-to-wall flowerey decor and furnishings, it was plain duck-egg walls, and a "modern" bed (faux-leather headboard and plain brown and green blankets). Not worth the extra money...

tall_andy 12.11.2006 · Read review
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Review of The Strand Palace Hotel, London

LUXURY IN LONDON!

Advantages: Brilliant rooms, service, food, internet etc
Disadvantages: expensive!!!

...around ten minutes in a queue to get two underground tickets, which came to a very reasonable £6. We then took the underground to Victoria, which only took around 10 minutes and didn?t require any changing of tube routes. My grandma, although having not stayed in this part of London before, had a very good idea of where the hotel was in relation to the underground. It wouldn?t have been a problem even if she hadn?t of known, as; as soon as we rose up from the underground stairs we were met by a large sign with a huge black arrow on it stating ?The Grosvenor?. We followed the sign and within literally a minute, we were outside the hotel. First impressions and checking in The hotel, from the outside was utterly huge, and extremely beautiful. It reminded me very much of a palace, it was a creamy brown colour and looked incredibly posh...

SweetTooth93 08.03.2009 (12.05.2009) · Read review
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Review of The Grosvenor, London

Michael Caine Is Harry Brown

Advantages: Gritty British thriller
Disadvantages: A bit full on at the end

...movies like Death Wish, Exterminator, Falling Down, and more recently, and perhaps more similarly Grand Torino. Harry Brown follows a pensioner as he makes the daily slog off his East London council estate past the gangs of violent youths to see his wife (terminally ill in hospital), and best friend Len. In a blink of an eye Harry?s life is torn apart, firstly his wife dies, then in a suspicious incident Len is killed by the gangs that essentially run the estate. An ex marine, Harry?s killer instinct is revived in a late night attack by the banks of a canal, having easily despatched one of these thugs, Harry is determined to take the rest down, regardless of cost. To use the term gritty would be too tame a word to describe this movie from first feature film helmer Daniel Barber. From the movies incredibly shocking opening to its brutal finale...

sghawken 03.11.2009 · Read review
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Review of Harry Brown

I'll be Fabulously Flirty if it gets people talking!!

Advantages: clean, fresh hair that smells as good as it looks
Disadvantages: More expensive than Batiste

...own brand and instead opted for a 150ml bottle of James Brown London fabulously flirty dry shampoo. James who? James Brown is the best friend of Kate Moss, at the age of 15 he landed his first job in a Croydon salon, his employers thinking he was actually 18 at the time. It is during his time at this salon that he met Kate Moss and it is James who was responsbile for Kate Moss' hair on the cover of Vogue Magazine in 1992 as her career as a model began to take off. Moving around the globe working with numerous celebrities and models, James launched his signature range in 2007, exclusively to Boots, the high street store we know and love. His Signature range is marketed as being a range which "provides an innovative, fresh perspective to the consumer, by bringing the hip London social scene to the mainstream market...

kappaslappa 14.10.2009 · Read review
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Review of James Brown Fabulously Flirty Dry Shampoo