London hotel one night post cruise

Our 15 day voyage on the Crown Princess ends in Southampton on Thursday, June 25th . We have booked a tour with Harry Norman that day. He will be picking four of us up at the Southampton cruise terminal and taking us touring around Windsor and London before dropping us off at our hotel that evening.

 

Originally all four of us planned to get a hotel room close to Heathrow that night, as we fly home the following day from there. For our friends this is definitely the best option as their flight leaves around 7:00 AM on June 26th, so being close to the airport only makes sense. However, my husband's and my flight doesn’t leave until 2:00 PM that day, so I am thinking it might be fun to stay in a different area of London so that we could walk around a bit that night and in the morning before heading off to Heathrow. I imagine we would want to be at the airport by around noon. We wouldn't really have much time for tours.... but just a couple hours to walk around and see some sites.

For those of you who are familiar with London, do you have any thoughts on my idea? If we were to stay somewhere besides right near Heathrow, what area of London might be fun to spend a few hours exploring, but not be too far from Heathrow, making it expensive/time consuming to get there around noon on Friday (with our luggage).

I read some posts on this board that suggest hotels in the County Hall area. This does appear to be within walking distance of some attractions, but I don't know about getting from there to Heathrow.

 

Thank you in advance for any insight you can share with me.

 

Kim

Hi Kim in CA,

 

I'm Sheila in CA. We are staying over at Heathrow in June and November this year and did so two years ago. You are allowing too little time to arrive at the airport and board your airplane. It is a "ZOO" at Heathrow. You need at least three hours from the time you arrive at Heathrow to go through all the security and lines -- especially during the summer months when all the tourists and students travel. If you put "Heathrow Hotels" in the search mode at the top of the page, you will come up with some hotels that are close to the airport. We stayed at the Heathrow Marriott and there is a whole street full of hotels which are one half mile from the airport. There is also a Hilton right in the airport (I believe it is in Terminal 3). That's the terminal we will be taking our flight home to LAX. If you don't want to stay at the airport, stay in London and get a cab (which will be about $100 US) to get to the airport about 10:00 a.m. the very latest which will give you the three hours. Since you won't have that much time in the morning to sightsee, save the sightseeing for another vacation.

 

The search mode will give you a lot of info.

 

Happy cruising.

 

Sheila

However, my husband's and my flight doesn’t leave until 2:00 PM that day, so I am thinking it might be fun to stay in a different area of London so that we could walk around a bit that night and in the morning before heading off to Heathrow. I imagine we would want to be at the airport by around noon. We wouldn't really have much time for tours.... but just a couple hours to walk around and see some sites.

 

For those of you who are familiar with London, do you have any thoughts on my idea? If we were to stay somewhere besides right near Heathrow, what area of London might be fun to spend a few hours exploring, but not be too far from Heathrow, making it expensive/time consuming to get there around noon on Friday (with our luggage).

I think that your idea is a good one as long as you're prepared to abandon your friends in the late afternoon or early evening so that you can enjoy the city in the evening; or they're prepared to come into town with you to spend the evening with you, and then make their way back to their airport hotel later in the evening; or you're prepared to give up the idea of spending the evening in town.

 

Once you decide that you want to stay in town, all the usual places will be fine. There is no such thing as "not too far from Heathrow" - as the airport is 15 miles from the centre of town, you're either at Heathrow and a long way from town, or you're in town and a long way from Heathrow. There's no middle ground worth having, because that would just be a long way from both.

 

Arriving at the airport at about noon for a 2 pm flight is what most people would do - although your comfort room partly depends on which airline you're flying. If I arrive at Heathrow two hours before a flight, I regard myself as having got there on the early side, although there's always something to do to pass the time.

 

One of the things that you will have to think about is how you are going to get from central London to the airport in the morning, if that's what you decide to do. All the options are extensively discussed on this forum, but you do need to have a think about how you're going to do it. That may have an influence on where you want to stay.

I would concur with Globaliser and encourage you to stay in Central London.

 

With London's public transport you can easly get out and about wherever you are staying. Logistically, a simple solution is to stay around Paddington Station with direct trains to Heathrow. (The Heathrow Express train offers a faster link to the passenger terminals than many Heathrow Hotels). The Hilton Paddington is the ultimate in convenience being part of Paddington Station, a more economic solution in the area is the Novotel Paddington, Commodore Hotel or Hilton Metropole.

 

My personal favourite area to stay would be the Bloomsbury area and if I had to pick one hotel the Rennaisance Chancery Court. Bloomsbury is the literary district of London and a great place to explore, its next to the main theatre and restaurant district and some of the major sights all within walking distance.

Thanks all for the responses. Seems like most of the folks on our cruise roll call are staying at the Rennaisance Chancery Court, and we are considering it, but it might be a bit expensive for our short stay. I will try to find another hotel in the Bloomsbury area that costs less.

Harry Norman's wife, Pat, has suggested we stay in the Kensington area because it is a nice area and a short taxi ride from Heathrow. I spent some time on tripadvisor last night and found the Luna Simone Hotel (47/49 Belgrave Road), which offers a double for 100 pounds. It gets great reviews. What do you think of staying in that area?

Kim