Getting There:
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The Copthorne Tara Hotel is conveniently situated a short walk (about 5 minutes) from the Kensington High Street Tube station. This means that getting to and from the hotel is quick and convenient. The Kensington High Street Tube Station is part of both the District and Circle Lines, meaning that you can get to many major and convenient locations by jumping on the tube there (including Kings Cross and Victoria stations). Although this was probably bad luck, I do urge you to check that while staying at the Copthorne Tara, the district and circle lines are running as unfortunately during my stay they were under maintenance for 2 of the days. In this case the nearest station was Notting Hill, which was around a 30 minute walk away (not good when wearing high heals to go to the theatre). In terms of proximity to the west end theatres, the Copthorne Tara is about a 30 minute (around £15) taxi drive. When getting the tube it took us about 20 minutes.

What's at the Copthorne Tara?
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The Copthorne Tara has 3 kinds of rooms, normal, club room and junior suite. During my stay I was lucky to be in a club room, which costs around £40 per night to upgrade to, but gives you the added benefit of:
-free use of the gym
-free tea and coffee in the club lounge (note* although this sounds very classy, it is not served to you, you get it from a coffee machine)
-free drinks between 6.45 and 8.15
-Free Broadband Internet Access (both in the room, and computers are available to use free of charge in the club lounge)
- Complimentary Continental Breakfast (usually about 12.00)

• A refrigerator* - No not a mini bar, just a refrigerator, inside are bottles of complimentary water. Then the rest of the space is for you to use however you like. We used it to put our sandwiches in.
• Tea and Coffee Making Facilities* - With tea, coffee, sugar, Candrel (sweetener), hot chocolate, kettle, a filter coffee, some biscuits. Although we did start with this things weren't always replaced, and after the first day we didn't get any more biscuits.
• Telephone* - Good for calling room service to bring up a lovely pizza!
• A hair dryer* - Nothing to write home about
• Satellite TV and pay movies* (6 out of 12 of which were porn...make your own mind up but it didn't impress me).
  The furniture in our room included; a mirrored wardrobe, 2 beds of decent size, a desk/dressing table with mirror, a cabinet with 3 draws and a cupboard as well as a cupboard containing tea and coffee making facilities. A trouser press, a large arm chair and a beside table. The number of light switches was impressive, with each individual lamp/light having it's own switch in various parts of the room. However, I found the 'master switch' useful, which just turned what lights were on - off.

Eating and drinking facilities:
*Bugis Street Brasserie* - A restaurant in the hotel that serves Singaporean, Chinese and Malaysian food. Although we did not try going to this restaurant, it seemed that it was a popular choice and the food looked lovely.

*Copthorne Club Lounge* - exclusively for Club Lounge customers. Coffee and tea is available from a machine all day. While free drinks (beer, wine and coke) are available from 6.45 - 8.15. The club lunge also serves breakfast between 8 and 10. I did see a clever trick, some people ordered their food into the club lounge and had their free drinks with their meal between 6.45 and 8.15.

In conclusion to this section, although the hotel in general is nice and the rooms are spacious and homely, I cannot recommend eating in the bar, as I found the service badly organized and rude.

*Cleaners*
While it is difficult to comprehend how difficult it must be to be a hotel cleaner, I did find the cleaning service a little annoying during our stay. Firstly, possibly our own fault, we were awoken at 9 oclock in the morning by the cleaner coming in (we didn't have our do not disturb sign on the door, which we put up when we got out of bed). However, cleaning was supposed to progress at 9.00 therefore being in the middle of the corridor on the 11th floor we did not expect to be fighting the cleaners off at the stroke of 9. Additionally, as mentioned previously, not everything was replaced. For example, we began with 2 bottles of water, one mineral and one fizzy, when we drank these they were replaced by only 1 bottle of water. The biscuits were the same, on the first day we had 2, on the second day they weren't replaced, nor on the third. Although I can make my peace with everything not being replaced one situation occurred with the cleaners that I feel was not right. We had gone downstairs to attempt to get our key replaced, on returning to our room we were told by a cleaner that we couldn't come in, not even to get our stuff and that we would have to return in 10 minutes. Although we weren't in a particular rush that day, and we didn't push to go in and get our stuff, we were put in a situation where we felt we couldn't really push and say we wanted to get in as (perhaps because the cleaner did not speak English well) we were basically told to go away.

*Club Lounge Staff*
Although during the day the club lounge was quiet, with little or not staff present, on a morning around 3 staff managed the tables during breakfast, ensuring that everyone had coffee or juice. They were kind, friendly and polite and we had no problems at all with them. In fact they made the stay more comfortable.

*Room Service*
On one occasion we ordered room service. When calling for room service I was greeted, again by someone who's English was not excellent, I asked for a pizza with chicken and a pint of lager. Although she understood basically what I wanted, she couldn't understand that I wanted chicken on the pizza, not just a chicken or a portion of chicken. However, she was kind and willing to listen carefully to understand and our order was right when it came. The man who brought us the food was very friendly and helpful, bringing the food over to the desk and uncovering it for us.

When the fire alarm went off at 2.00 in the morning on Monday, it was almost insulting that we weren't told what was happening. It was not a fire drill, therefore there was cause for alarm. We walked down 11 flights of stairs and into the car park. To meet around 40 other confused guests. I was disgusted to see other guests hanging from their bedroom windows clearly deciding whether it was worth coming down, staff weren't ensuring that guests were getting out quickly. To a large extent it was every man for himself. Finally after about 20 minutes, a man who was difficult to understand (whether that was due to the echo on the megaphone or his accent or both, I am unsure) stood on the wall with a megaphone and said something that not many people seemed to understand and then walked back into the hotel. I presume it was that we could go back inside as he didn't question people following him.

Thanks for reading.