Travelodge London Kew Bridge, London > Reviews > No Queue at Kew

Author's product rating:   

Value for Money	Excellent
Quality of Rooms	Good
Standard of Service	Good
Quality of Food & Drink	Average
Cleanliness	Good

Advantages:	Quiet location and great value on the special offers
Disadvantages:	It is basic lodge accomodation

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The veranda on the front of the suite overlooked the Thames and made a perfect place to relax with a drink from the mini bar at the end of the day. The twin beds were both superkings, the TV was a 42" plasma, and the jacuzzi in the bathroom was an absolute delight, despite the fact that I was a bit full after the gourmet meal in the restaurant downstairs. It was a strange dream to have in a Travelodge where none of those things are realities !! - but probably reflected the comfortable night's sleep I was having in the Kew Travelodge.
Here are the realities :-

1 Value, Value, Value.

If you do not know what a cheapskate I am, you have not read my other reviews... shame on you, go and put your errors right immediately.!
If you recognised the name more associated with miserliness than Scrooge himself, you will expect me to have been virtually paid to stay here.
Well it was not quite that good. But this was a Travelodge £29 saver for a double in London. The only cheaper stay would be with family or friends - and family was away and friends are scarce - that's another story.!
I paid extra for a buffet breakfast in the morning, and there is a charge for parking in the underground car park - but I was walking.... another story.

2 Usual, usual, usual

There was no queue at the Kew desk.
The check-in was the usual travelodge desk with polite, cheery staff, efficient computer system, and helpful advice on where to eat.
The room was the usual travelodge room, with a view over the Thames - ( if you opened the window, have a neck as long as a giraffe and swivel it round 90 degrees !)
The fittings were Travelodge usual, with the basics being clean and tidy, but no real frills.

3 Munch, munch, munch

Three rounds of consumption were experimented with. The first was coffee and biscuits in the room. There was plenty of coffee and lots of little plastic tubs of UHTmilk - ( ultra horribly tasteless, that is).
The biscuits were chocolate Hob-Nobs, which I had brought with me - biscuits are not otherwise provided.
Second munch was an evening meal in the restaurant.
This was a pizza and a drink. I had mixed feelings about it. The facilities are very limited and the pizza might well have been bought from Lidl's and kept in the freezer before being committed to a micro-wave with grill facility. But I had walked miles earlier to get from Kew underground to the hotel. I had not passed many high-class restaurants, nor even many greasy chip shops, and so I was truly thankful that Kew Travelodge actually has this facility.
Third munch was the buffet breakfast in the morning.
The same venue as last night's supper, but much busier, with serve-yourself juice, cereals, coffee, tea, chocolate and cooked breakfast.
Now I have travelled enough to know that even high class hotels manage to produce scrambled eggs which sit under hot lights long enough for the egg to develop a lovely rubbery texture, slopping around in the milky stuff that has leeched out over the 2 hours it has sat on the tray reaching its lukewarm state.
The chefs who cooked last night's wild boar sirloin to perfection, allow their staff to populate bain-maries with slices of pig at breakfast time that have been sliced so thin they are transparent and cooked so long they endanger the safety of dentures.
Well I was truly impressed with the bacon, eggs, sausages, mushrooms etc in Kew. They were in small dishes which were being constantly renewed, and piping hot.
My only problem was an over-enthusiastic table-clearer who removed my coffee, roll and marmalade in the brief time I took to get some toast done.! It meant that I had to go back and reload all over again.

3 Location, location, location.

For those who specially want a stay in the Kew area, this is perfect.
It is about a quarter of a mile from the railway station, on a bus route and has car parking available.
Likewise, for those who need to be in the general south London area for work or pleasure, it is a quiet, pleasant area alongside the river, just a short walk from Kew Bridge.
For those who intend to party all night, and stagger home to your room a short distance from your choice of West End club, Kew is not a great idea.
My already-alluded-to complaint was that I took the underground from central London. This was the advice given by an official at Victoria station when I explicitly descibed where I was going and asked for the most convenient way of getting there. Kew Gardens Underground is at a perfect distance from Kew Travelodge if you are in training for the 2012 Olympics walking race. If you are on your way after an overnight stay, to a board meeting, followed by a family visit for a couple of days, have a hefty case and a laptop case as well, and its raining, its cold, and you haven't got a clue which direction you should start walking in, it is enough to try the patience of a saint.!

I have already booked another stay in the same Travelodge for later this year- a seal of approval indeed.!