Finding hotels in London has always been a bit of a problem for me.  I think this is partly because people rarely know the hotels in the places they live!  I can tell you a lot more about hotels in San Francisco than  in London or Baltimore!  But I don’t live in London any more, my fairly frequent visits to London mean that I need to know places that are comfortable, pleasant, and economical.

Holiday Inn - Brentford

As I  spend most of my time on the west side of London, the Holiday Inn in Brentford is an ideal place to stay, and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for alternative to staying at Heathrow.  Heathrow hotels tend to make you feel a bit like a prisoner because you usually can’t wander out for a walk or to find a restaurant or a pub.  This happens at a lot of airport hotels, but Heathrow makes matters worse because you often have to pay to take a shuttle from the airport’s terminals to your hotel.

Click here for an authoritative guide to hotel shuttles at Heathrow and free alternatives.

Getting to the Bentford Lock Holiday Inn from Heathrow  is easy.  From the airport, take the Piccadilly Line to Boston Manor.  At Boston Manor, you take the E8 bus, which stops right outside the hotel (Commerce Road, Brentford).  This takes no more than about forty minutes door to door.

If you book through the Holiday Inn website, this hotel can be a little expensive, but I have often found wonderful bargains here by booking through Hotwire.  Go to the Hotwire site and select London airport (LHR) as your destination.  Then narrow your search to “Ealing, Hammersmith, and Brentford.”  Then select the 3.5 star hotel for that area.  I have done this four times, and this hotel has always been selected.  The price for a room for the night usually ranges from $49 to $59, and Hotwire usually adds a bit to that, but it remains a wonderful bargain!  (Don’t select a three star hotel as this will put you in the Holiday Inn Express in North Acton, an adequate and charmless hotel in a much less agreeable area.)

So, what’s so nice about it?

Tow path near Brentford Holiday Inn

• You are in a pleasant area of London off the beaten tourist track, and a nice canal with a tow path that is great for a walk.

Room - Brenford Holiday Inn

• The rooms are clean, well appointed, and bright with good space if you need to work.
• The staff are friendly.

Desserts at Bentford Holiday Inn

• The hotel’s restaurant offers nice food. (Try the Indian dinners and the buffet roast on Sundays.)
• There is free wi-fi in the lobby.  (You have to pay from the rooms.)
• There’s an excellent award-winning Irish pub next door called O’Brien’s.  Click here for O’Brien’s pub.

Bathroom - Brentford Holiday Inn

• The bathrooms are good with wonderful showers.  (I always feel a bit grubby after a long haul flight!)

I stayed at the Brentford Holiday Inn in February 2010 and again in June 2010, and I thought I should add a few comments on the restaurant as it was not quite as good in June as in February.

The Sunday roast remained a good deal at GBP 12.95, but the beef was dry and over-cooked.  The chef was unapologetic about this, but the manager took great pains to find another piece of beef and to make sure we were satisfied. The deal for the Sunday roast includes starters from a buffet, the main course, and an excellent selection of desserts.  (See the picture above.)

The Indian dinner is good value at GBP 12.95 with a good buffet of Indian dishes.  Starters are brought to your table.  Many of the people who work at this hotel are from India, and the Indian food is authentic and good.

I have not tried the breakfast (GBP 9.95) as I prefer to go to the nearby Morrisons supermarket that has excellent croissants (GBP 1.25 for a bag of six), which I eat in my room with coffee.  (Coffee facilities are provided, but it is much better if you can bring your own Bodum.)

Usually, United flight 925 is one of my favorites.  Scheduled to leave London at 4:20 in the afternoon and arrive in Washington at 7:34 in the evening, this flight lets you spend a little more time in England and you don’t have to rush to the airport early in the morning.

This turned out to be a pretty awful flight, though.  It was absolutely full, and I volunteered to give up my seat, but unfortunately the no-shows allowed the plane to leave without a single empty seat and nobody was able to take a bump.  Since it was such a full flight and I am now in the ignominious position of holding a just a blue card on United, I was given one of the punishment seats — 41J on the Boeing 777.  All my attempts to engineer a seat change failed!

I have been in punishment seats before, but I think this is the worst.  First, it is in the back of the plane at the point, and it at the point where the fuselage becomes narrower.  So they put the seats in a 2-4-2 configuration rather than 2-5-2 as in the rest of the economy section of the plane.  (For the uninitiated, this simply means SEAT-SEAT-AISLE-SEAT-SEAT-SEAT-SEAT-AISLE-SEAT-SEAT).

41J is the third seat across in the middle section so you need to ask your neighbor to move if you need to get up for any reason.  With four seats in your row and five seats in the row in front of you,  your seat isn’t aligned to a screen in front of you making it almost impossible to enjoy a movie.  The seats are a little narrower than in the rest of the economy section because they can’t put a tray in the seat in front of you so they have to put the tables in the arm rests.

I continue to refuse to pay extra for “Economy Plus” on United, but I strongly recommend that readers avoid traveling in this row.  Consult SeatGuru.com for advice on seating!

Food was predictable — fairly juicy breast of chicken; a nasty salad; and a dessert that most people left.  Flights out of London do offer butter rather than the strange spread that you get on flights originating out of Washington.  Drinks were offered at $6.00 each, and the wine was the rather poor Redwood Creek.

A strange snack appears about two hours before landing — a sandwich (not nice), a bag of crisps (chips), and a Twix.

The flight left on time and arrived a little early.  I’ll continue to use this flight to get my Star Alliance points, but this was one of the most unpleasant transatlantic flights I have had in a long time.

I resent United behaving like a low cost carrier particularly as this flight cost $1250 for the round trip.

Morrell’s Wine Bar

1 Rockefeller Plaza

New York, NY 10020-2003

www.morrellwinebar.com

212 262 7700

Drinking Seis 2007 at Morrell's wine bar

As many readers already know, I made a resolution to visit New York once a month.  I really want to get to know this fascinating city well.

Although I try to make sure I see places that I have not seen before, Morrell’s wine bar just off the Rockefeller Center draws me back time after time.  It has a list that is almost the size of a phone directory with more than 2,000 interesting and reasonably priced wines, a friendly bar where I almost always seem to wind up sharing experiences (and wine) with a new friend, and a good list of appetizers to have with your wine.  You can drink by the bottle and have access to the full selection, and you can choose to drink by the glass from a list of about 100 wines.  (I am amazed that the servers always find your choice of wine instantly, and it always tastes fresh.  Quite an achievement when the choice is so broad!)  The wines by the glass start at about $8.00.

The wine in the picture is a 2007 Seis from Luberri from Rioja.  This is 100% Tempranillo from vines that are 15 to 25 years old.  It is bursting with dark fruit (raspberry and blackberry) with smoky overtones and reveals soft tannins as you swallow.  A very concentrated and well made wine that retails at around $12.00 a bottle. Highly recommended.

The people who serve the wine seem to know their stuff.  I also like the way they place the wine in front of you at the bar even if you are only drinking a glass so that you can caress the bottle and inspect it.  All the wine is served in nice glass, and they serve interesting, well-chosen, low priced wine as well as seriously delicious and expensive stuff.

They offer things to eat as well.  I sometimes have their steak tartare, which comes with a quail’s egg in the middle ($16/$25), or the plate of charcuterie plate (Jamon Serrano Ham, Saucisson De l’ail, Sopressata, Rillette de Gascogne, $16).  You can have a complete lunch or dinner although I have only had appetizers at the bar.

Although it is more expensive to eat Morrell’s, I wouldn’t be tempted by the Dean and Deluca shop next door.  I have eaten there on several occasions with the family, and it is nothing more than an over-priced and overcrowded fast food joint.  It never fails to disappoint.

I often spend some time at Morrell’s retail shop next door, but unfortunately they often seem to be unable to produce a bottle of the stuff that you have just enjoyed at the wine bar.

Post Box No. 49,

Jethwai Road,

Jaisalmer – 345001,

Rajasthan,

India

The Dhola Maru, a smart hotel about 3km out of Jaisalmer, though not cheap by Indian standards, was, in my opinion, money well spent for a short, one night stay away from the ceaseless heat, dust and hustle and bustle of an Indian town. 675

A night in a room for 3 people was Rs. 1500 (just over £20). The room was spacious and clean, with wonderful air-conditioning- you know it’s doing a good job when you actually feel cold in the hottest part of India at the hottest time of year.

Complete with swimming pool, restaurant, bar, internet, laundry service, room service, doctor on call and massage parlour, the hotel offers all western comforts, but is still visually and architecturally pretty Indian.

However, there are no unique or particularly exciting characteristics to the hotel, and if you’re looking for an interesting or unique hotel, this isn’t for you. If, however, you’re looking for one night of comfort and luxury, perhaps as a break from cheaper hotels, this is a better choice for you.

The complimentary breakfast consisted of a self-service spread of toast, cereal, mango, papaya, boiled eggs and tea, as well as a choice between omelette or fried egg served at the table.

I left the hotel feeling a great deal cleaner and cooler than I had in a long time, but at the same time, longing to get back to the business, excitement and fun of real India. My one night experience of western comfort was quite sufficient- enough to refresh me and make me appreciate normal Indian life even more, however exasperating the dirt and heat can get.

The Cozy Guest House

Navechokiya Road,

Brahm Puri,

Chuna Ki Choki,

Jodhpur

0091 291 2612066

www.cozyguesthouse.com

Hidden away behind Mehrangarh Fort, in a steep little street in the old part of the city of Jaipur, the Cozy Guest House is a delightful little travellers’ retreat, full of charm and originality. Its prices are very reasonable, ranging from Rs. 200 to Rs. 850 per room.

The double room I comfortably shared with 2 friends was Rs. 550 (less than £10), and came with a private bathroom and air-conditioning. I was very torn when deciding between rooms, as they vary quite a lot, and are all quaint in their own way. I would say it’s definitely worth looking at all available rooms before deciding which to take.

The hotel offers internet access at a reasonable Rs. 30 per hour, though it doesn’t allow you to upload anything to the internet so there are no USB sockets- something I found highly irritating.

This hotel is definitely not for anyone physically challenged in any way as there are a good few steep roads to get to the hotel, and, even once you are there, there are lots of steep little staircases inside. Tuc tucs can’t get directly to the door of the hotel, so they leave you on a flatter road just down the hill. It’s not far up, but the road is quite steep, which is a bit of a pain if you have a lot of baggage.

A highlight of the hotel is its rooftop terrace, which offers wonderful views over the old city and to the stunning Mehrangarh fort.

There is also a good restaurant on the rooftop terrace-

the menu was vegetarian (typical for Rajasthan), and served snacky western food such as omelettes, pizzas, eggs on toast etc., as well as more traditional Rajasthani food. I chose a dish of aloo palak, a delightful spicy mix of potato and spinach. This combined with a plain roti, and a bottle of mineral water cost me Rs.75, a good price for a simple but enjoyable meal. I rather splashed out on breakfast, with a bowl of muesli and mixed fruit with milk for Rs. 50, which was expensive as most non-typically Indian choices in restaurants are.

A nice feature of the hotel is the interesting wall paintings dotted round everywhere from the rooms to the corridors, to the restaurant to the entrance.

Staff were friendly and welcoming as well as highly patient when we took a while deciding how many of our group would be stayng at the hotel. There is a nice family atmosphere. I would highly recommend this charming, good value little hotel.

The Hawa Mahal

Built in 1799, under the Maharaja Sarai Pratap, the Hawa Mahal, or the palace of the winds, is one of the must see tourist sites in Jaipur. It is a five-storied building, with two main courtyards. It is called the palace of the winds due to the winds always being stronger than elsewhere, as they are brought in through the hundreds of windows which the palace is so famous for.

The entrance fee is 50 rupees per person, and you will receive numerous offers from guides (costing about 25 rupees per person) who hover about outside the main entrance. I opted to explore without a guide, and was pleasantly surprised to see 2 information boards inside the palace.

I was slightly underwhelmed by the palace, both in terms of size and detail, probably due to me having read too much hype about it beforehand. However, I still feel it was still definitely worth the time and entrance fee.

One thing that really struck me whilst I was at there was just how impressively cool the palace was. Coming from the blazing afternoon sun outside, the cool dark corridors of the palace provided a blissful break from the heat. There were wonderful views over both the old and new parts of the city, as the Hawa Mahal is just on the outskirts of the old city and actually now overlooks a busy road.

The most impressive side of the palace (the wall made entirely of ornate windows) is in fact best seen from the new city, from the opposite side of the main road, which you need pay no entry fee to access. The whole wall is a lovely pinky-red shade with white detail, though is slightly marred by the many shops and stalls blocking the bottom part of the wall (or you could say this makes for an interesting contrast). Unfortunately, it is now almost impossible to catch a good photo of this side of the wall because of the busy traffic on the road.

Amber Fort is about 11 km from the city of Jaipur in Rajasthan, in Amber, which takes its name from the common local stone of the area. It was my first major tourist site in India and I was not disappointed

The impressive visit began with having to queue for an elephant ride, which was taken full advantageof by the many salesmen wishing to sell you paintings, postcards, marionnettes, or else some form of rudimentary sitar. Prices, even for the same things from the same seller vary wildly, depending on how much they think they can get out of you, and it is not uncommon for a seller, having got a no from you for buying something for 20 rupees, to then jump up to 50, somehow belieing you’ll be more likely to buy it for that price than 20!

The elephant ride was an exciting and delightful, though slightly saddening and mildly disgruntling experience. The seats that are placed on top of the elephants for tourists at Amber Fort are simple constructions that manage to fit 2 people per elephant in a mildly uncomfortable sideways position. The ascent up to Amber Fort gives the passenger an ever inceasingly spectacular view of the surroundings and the 18km wall that goes around the fort, which is the third longest complete defensive wall in the world. As the slope steepens, you find yourself having to constantly readjust yourself as you slip towards the back of the elephant.

Looking more carefully at the other elephants as you continue up- particularly whilst looking into their eyes- you will begin to feel uncomfortable as you see how sad and tired they look. The healthy dark grey colour that you usually see of elephants’ trunks had faded into a peachy, pigmented sort of look on most of the elephants there- perhaps a mark of ill treatment? Surely they are not meant to be this colour?

As you follow the pathway up, there are at least 3 photographers along the way, seemingly desperate to get your photo and calling out or you to smile and look in their direction. The confusion we all felt at this soon cleared as we were leaving the fort and men suddenly jumped out clutching photos of us on our elephant, and, thrusting them into our hands, tried to sell them to us for as much as 2 for 250 rupees (about £4). In the end, bought 3 from one photographer for 50 rupees (just under £1), which I thought was quite reasonable.

Even if you have already paid for the elephant ride itself, you will certainly be asked for a tip as you are getting off. We gave the driver 10 rupees, which doesn’t seem like that much, but considering the average weekly wage in India is Rs. 500 or Rs. 600, I didn’t it seemes like too little. The driver protested that this wasn’t enough, however, so we gave him another 10 and asked to get off. He then proceeded to refuse to let us off until we paid him further more, a move which made me feel uncomfortable, a bit angry, and highly resisitant to the idea of giving him more money. We refused and though he kept us up there quite a while more, I realised that it was not in his interest to keep us there too long, as he evidently would make more money by moving on to transporting new customers as quickly as possible. That soon proved to be true, as he gave up and we were let off in the impressive first courtyard of Amber Fort.

Having been stuck in the unpleasant disagreement for the last part of our ride on the elephant, we had not yet had a chance to appreciate being inside the fort itself. We were taken around by a guide which I would say is definitely worth spending the extra on, particularly if you are a larger group, as there are not many signposts around the fort and you get so much more out of the experience, if you know more about it.

We were first shown around the hamman, or Turkish baths, which were only allowed to be used by the king (or raj) and whichever of hisqueens (rania) he happened to favour more at the time. The baths were complete with running hot and cold water and a steam room, which seemed so much more spectacular to me after just the few days I had been in India so far. Even staying with a host family who were very well-off (the husband was a doctor), we had still been limited to one bucket of cold water each per day due to ever increasing water shortages in the area. Running water was only available one hour per day, and our hosts told us that the Indian goverment have announced that water will soon only be available once every 3 days all across India. Whilst wandering through the maze of the bath complex at Amber Fort, it was bizarre to think that the raj was bathing here in whole pools filled with hot water back in the early 19th century.

Sheek Mahal (mirror palace) second largest mirror palace in the world after Versailles.

The secret corridor around the appartments of the 12 rania, so that the king could see one of them without the others knowing. Appartments around a pavilion where the 32 children of the 12 ranis played.

The natural cooling system on the side of the palace facing the mountains- waterfall of scented water behind a screen, and as it runs the room on the other side of the screen is cooled because of the cool winds coming through the waterfall into the room.

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I rather like TripIt, the popular site that keeps records of your travel plans.  It is really handy to have your whole trip available on the internet, and it is especially useful as a way of storing all your confirmation numbers in a single place that’s easy to access.

When you get a confirmation from a major travel vendor, you can simply forward the confirming e-mail from your vendor (airline, hotel chain, car rental company, and so on) to plans@tripit.com.  TripIt parses the email and adds the confirmation to your itinerary.

TripIt has done quite a good job of making sure that it works with many major vendors (including the Metropolitan Opera!), and, on the whole, it works rather well.  It was especially useful when we went to Thailand last summer for a three-week trip with many flights on different airlines and many hotels purchased from different vendors.

But TripIt does not work well at all with Megabus!  First, if you book a series of journeys in a single reservation, TrpIt parses all of them as a single trip, and it is a pain in the neck to split them up. Another limitation is that the mobile version of TripIt for the Blackberry does not display the most vital piece of information: the confirmation number that you have to show the driver when you board the bus.

This drove me into a near panic as I was driving to catch a Megabus this morning.  Unusually, I hadn’t printed my itinerary before leaving the house, and when i checked it on the Blackberry, I found it was not there.

Fortunately, I was able to contact friends who retrieved the vital number from the TripIt website and sent it to me by e-mail.

But it does mean that the mobile version of TripIt for the Blackberry is almost useless as a tool to support Megabus trips!

My first experience of Virgin Atlantic has altogether been a fairly pleasant one, despite a few unimpressive incidents. At the departure gate, a range of magazines, including The Week, Hello, In Style and Stylist, are available for passengers to help themselves to. There was, unfortunately very little choice of newspaper however: The Daily Mail or The Financial Times were the only options. We were all warmly greeted when boarding the aircraft, with staff offering to help passsengers find their seats. A blanket and a pillow are left on every seat for the passengers to take as they board.

Just after take-off, every passenger is given a complementary pack, which includes a draw-string bag, sleeping socks, and eye mask, a toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste and a pen. Headphones are also handed out. There is a small screen on the back of every seat, which shows the current location of the plane and how it is progressing.

Later in the flight, a choice of movies, TV programmes, games and radio stations become available too. The choice of films was not very large, but it was a nice and very up to date selection.

About an hour after take-off, food and drinks were brought round. The choices for the meal were: chicken curry, roast chicken, or vegetable curry. Each main dish came with a starter of minted cous cous salad which was pretty dull- there was too much mint and little of anything else of flavour. Salad, I believe, was a hightly inapporopriate term for something in which the only vegetation was the mint and a very small amount of peppers. The chicken curry I chose ‘Kori Gashi’ was neither particularly bad nor particularly good. The daal that came with it, however, seemed to rely on being too hot, to mask a lack of any other taste. The paratha was too thick and slightly confusing- an incomprehensible combination of too oily yet too dry. To finish the meal, there was ‘Cococnut Prini’, a fairly non-descript, strangely textured, vaguely coconut-ty, overly sweet, jellyish mush.

Drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, were provided on demand and without limit throughout the flight. Breakfast was served at about an hour and a half beofre the scheduled landing time. The two choices were English breakfast or vegetarian Indian breakfast. The English breakfast that I had consisted of reasonable scambled eggs, a couple of nice little hash browns, and a not very pleasant meat patty with tomato sauce.

About half an hour before the scheduled landing time, we were informed that the airspace over Delhi was overcrowded which meant it was necessary to wait for it to clear before we could land. However, due to the plane not having enough fuel to wait until the airspace was clear, we had to take a diversion of abour 400 miles each way to Ahmadabad, to refuel. We were kept up to date with what the situation was throughout the delay, and countless apologies were given both by the captain and by the hotesses. In the end, we arrived at Delhi about 3 hours late, but after a pretty comfortable, fairly pleasant flight.