London Hotels-The Royal National, Etc

A few years ago, back when British Airways was trying to boost ridership on the Concord, they had a costume contest. British Airways was giving away trips to London. Costume contest. British Airways. London. Count me in. The Wife found out the Ride The Rocket costume contest and she has a dead brilliant Borg costume, which has won her a number of prizes over the years. We entered the contest, chatted up the British Airways flight crew, and won four round trip tickets to London. Insert shouts of joy here.

Since it was a British Airways trip, they sent us a packet of London Tourist info and a list of the many properties owned by British Airways. We picked the Royal National, as it seemed to be fairly cheap and was pretty close to many of the London Attractions that we wanted to see. The Royal National is right down the street from the British Museum, for example.

The room was on the small side, but it was clean and we were more than ready for some rest after the nine hour flight and that nice little ride on the Gatwick Express. It was impossible to rest too much with London right outside our window. We wandered down to the British Museum, which is huge beyond imaging, and looked at the Mummy Room, the Totem Poles, and a baffling array of odds and ends from all over the world. We then went back to our London Hotel to watch the telly for the rest of the afternoon. Jet lag is a bitch.

The next day we felt a bit better about being a world away from Texas. We went down to have some of the Royal National's free breakfast, which turned out to be a rather large mound of toast and a lot of small tubs of jams and jellies. Not exactly the Full English Breakfast, but what do you want for nothing? The Royal National was just our home base while we explored London-a place to eat cucumber sandwiches from a local market, and watched British TV shows we had never heard of before.

I'm sure that The Royal National is not the best hotel in London, but it worked for us. Thanks for having that Ride The Rocket contest, British Airways. When are you going to have another one?