Travelodge London City Airport

This Travelodge is 15 minute walk or one bus stop to the London City Airport, and easily accessible from the Underground through Canning Town station and bus 474 to street in front of hotel (DLR stops 20 minute walk away) LCA offers inexpensive fares to the rest of Europe ($50 to Amsterdam in my case). There are no pubs, restaurants nearby in this semi-industrial area, but a dining/drinking facility in the hotel. Hotel and rooms are clean, simple, secure, modern. Recommended among the number of iffy London inexpensive hotels. WIFI report: Ripoff alert! On booking the room I was encourged to pre-pay for a certain time of WIFI access during my stay. Problem was it wasn't cumulative, so when I used just 20 minutes of the hour I had signed up for the hour was gone. Hotel desk said they had no control over it because it was run by another company. Internet access in the lobby was much cheaper than in the room @ L1 for 20:00. I have demanded a refund from Travelodge.

Go up to London by train, have a nice meal in the west end then take the tube to the convenient hotel right by the airport. Enjoy a good night's sleep and in the morning a leisurely stroll to get our flight.. ...or so we thought.

We got off the tube at London City Airport after 11pm to find ourselves in a dark, quiet car park with no sign of any hotels. We wandered about with our luggage in tow looking lost for while until we saw a cab. The driver knew the hotel (of course) but suggested that it was a fair walk considering our luggage, so we jumped in.

The hotel was, I suppose 'within walking distance' of the airport (when you think about it, that doesn't mean very much) but the next day's slog of a walk dragging suitcases rendered the description somewhat optimistic, to say the least.

The hotel itself was exactly what you'd expect for a budget hotel in a business area, cleary designed by an architect whose previous projects had included prisons and abattoirs - but that was ok, after all, we were just there to sleep. Ah yes, sleep….

At about 2 am there was much slamming of doors and shouting in the corridor. There was no phone in the room to alert reception (although I'd have thought that they should have been able to hear the noise anyway) so after waiting a reasonable amount of time in the hope that the racket would end, I pulled on my dressing gown and ventured out. I was faced with a group of 5 or 6 ‘youths’, clearly quite drunk, having an enthusiastic debate about the promiscuous nature of one of the girls in the group. This involved the girl shouting and swearing incessantly at the boys, who returned the compliments en masse. Somewhat nervously I asked them to stop and to my amazement, they agreed. I returned to my room.

Half an hour went by before it all ‘went off’ again – only this time with much greater ferocity. Once again I donned my robe and ventured out – this time to be confronted by about a gang of about 20, lining the corridor and jeering ‘you gonna complain, eh mistah?’ and making a few inaccurate suggestions about my parenthood and sexuality. I decided to proceed nonetheless and made my way (in as calm and dignified a manner as I could muster in my robe) to reception.

I was greeted by the sight of several other guests, all in their robes, all complaining of the same disturbance throughout the hotel. The receptionist was ‘dealing’ with the problem by crying a lot and promising that we would all be reimbursed (which of course, never happened). Eventually she agreed to call the police so I made my way back through the jeering gang towards my room. By now it was well past 4am.

We got up at six. I had had NO sleep, my adrenaline level was through the roof and all I had to look forward to was the ‘walking distance’ endurance march to the airport.

Never again.