Came here along with my parents for my dad's convention at Excel London
The hotel lobby is on the third floor, not the ground floor, above the entrance and the meeting rooms. The room we got was double queen, but we realized that the second queen bed was really just an uncomfortable pull out couch-bed. The room, because of the lack of space, was really small compared to a normal double queen room, but we lived with it.. kind of.
The bathrooms/washrooms were interesting. Right to the left of where you walk in, there is a toilet- but that's just what it was, a small room with a toilet. The actual washroom with showers and whatnot was right next to one of the beds. Don't really know if anyone else had this experience or do I really have an opinion on it, just putting that out there!
Another interesting thing was that there was a shoeshiner right next to the elevators! My sister and I played with it and made our Converse shine, but it really was nice. So, hey, if you ever need to shine your shoes...
A downside to this hotel is that it doesn't have an ice machine. An ice machine really is important when you need to fill up your water bottle for a day out in London. You can substitute cold ice for your sink rap water, but ice would really, REALLY, have been preferred.
While maids had a polite and respectful attitude and were very generous and considerate, the receptionists were a different story. They were exceptionally rude and annoying, to be honest, especially over the phone. I tried avoiding them at all costs, as childish as it may seem. My head was just an alarm going 'AVOID EYE CONTACT, AVOID EYE CONTACT.'
Since we stayed for about a week, we also ate breakfast there on more than one occasion. They don't have a wide variety of food, but it was okay in my opinion. The waffles were really good, actually. But we also missed breakfast a lot of times due to waking up late- which is 100% our fault. Just for future reference, breakfast is open from 6:45 to 11:00 AM on weekends and 6:45 to 10:00 on weekdays- double check though, because you can never be too sure.
The location of Novotel is really a double edged sword. On one hand, the nice thing about the hotel is that it's located right on the Thames River and it's a minute or two tops walk to the nearest train station. The con is that the distance from Excel, the station, to downtown London is far; you'll have to switch stations at least once, maybe twice to go where you want. Warning- it may take 45 minutes to an hour. The trains come really quickly- you'll wait five to ten minutes, but its just the fact that it's really far.
September 2013 read more