Brook Green Hotel

The Brook Green pub and hotel have been recently refurbished by the looks. The bar has been done in a strange colour, reminiscent of the colours bar ceiling used to turn from the nicotine stains and maybe that's the point. The bedrooms though have been tastefully refurbished, with a modern feel, including wall mounted flat screen TVs, whilst retaining the large Victorian windows and high ceilings. The staff are friendly, and the cooked breakfast was excellent on the first day and good on the second (depends on the chef?).

This is actually a surpisingly convenient location, maybe ten minutes walk from the Hammersmith tube stations, whilst King Street is packed with ethnic restaurants - try 101 Thai at 352 King St - a small but very authentic Thai restaurant. The Thames is only a short walk away, and makes for a very pleasant riverside stroll along the Thames Path down to Barns bridge, from where you can get a bus back to Hammersmith station.

Overall we thoroughly enjoyed our stay, which was good value in nicely refurbished rooms. However, if staying at the Brook Green, it is on a busy road and the noise from the pub - both music from the bar below and people out on the street out front, made sleeping difficult before the pub closed at 1am - there is an obvious solution though - have a pint in the bar! Our room was not made up during our stay, but since this was only two nights it didn't matter and could be argued that daily room make ups are excessive. There was no soap in the room, although there were other shower items so this may have been an oversight - we'd brought our own anyway.

All in all a good value stay in nicely refurbished rooms in a convenient location in the capital. Just be aware of the noise issues if that is a concern to you.

We stayed in this hotel for three nights. The location is handy to public transport. The ambience in the bar is nice. The staff were mostly young expatriates who were really friendly. Our room overlooked Shepherds Bush Road. We felt as if we were bombarded by sirens, with the fire station being very close, and the road being frequented by ambulances and police cars that had their sirens blaring at all hours. This did not make for restful sleep. Neither did hard beds. Our room needed quite a bit of maintenance - one power point didn't work, only one of three bathroom lights was functional, the shower leaked onto the end of the bath and water flowed from there to make a lake on the bathroom floor, and the main stairwell light was also not functioning. Housekeeping hadn't removed all of the previous occupants' rubbish and during our stay didn't once clean or replace our water glasses or tea cups - we had to clean them ourselves. We expected a bath towel each but didn't always get this and had to ask for more, although there were enough hand towels. Our room keys seemed programmed to work only once - we were having to get them reprogrammed several times each day. The breakfast menu runs from 7am till noon which is good for a sleep-in, but the standard of food is patchy.