Alison House Hotel

London has EXPENSIVE hotels, but Alison House is about as cheap as you can get. Double rooms are 56 pounds with the bathroom in the hall, 65 with a bathroom in the room. There are two showers and three toilets for about rooms, so that's not a bad sharing ratio. The rooms aren't fancy but perfectly reasonable, with a sink in each room, a built-in hair dryer, and a small TV with regular broadcast channels.

The location is good, near Buckingham Palace, Victoria Station, and the bus station. A pub and a fish-and-chips place are right around the corner. The street is actually well-known as home to celebrities (Maggie Thatcher lives one block over, Mozart composed his first symphony on the street), plus, we saw a Ferrari and a Bentley parked on the street while we were there.

The full English breakfast is good, and the owner's dog is fun and friendly.