Friday Apr. 7th, 2000 Edinburgh - London
13C/55F sunny and warm
Len
Had breakfast this morning, but not the full Scottish, just scrambled eggs,
toast and cold ceral. Packed and gathered our laundry up. Our landlady let
us store our bags in the lounge after we checked out, so we ran our laundry
over to the laundrette. 2 loads. While it washed, we popped over to the
Internet cafe. I ran back to move it to the dryer.... longer distance than
I thought! Back to the cafe, then right back to pick up all our nice clean
clothes. Grabbed our luggage from the B&B, and our hostess called us a
cab. Cab came fast and dropped us off at Waverly Station. We caught the
noon train to King's Cross, due to arrive at 4:43. We amused ourselves by
reading and watching the countryside speed by. Pulled into the station right
on time. You know the routine by now: Lugged our bags through the station
to the tube, then took said tube to Paddington, where we then man-handled them
a couple of blocks away to the
Pavilion:"The Rock & Roll Fashion" Hotel.
Of all the places we stayed on this trip, I believe we agree that this was
the most disappointing. It wasn't "bad" per se, it was just that we expected
a bit more, from reading reviews and for the price we paid. Upon arrival we
found the lobby locked. We had rung the bell several times when finally
someone came and let us in. [Geek alert] the guy was the spitting image of
the character Zathras on Bab5.. even talked like him! Our first impression
of the place was that it was gorgeously decorated in an eccentric "we have
too many googaws" sort of way. Stylish clutter I guess you could call it.
We waited in a front room which served as the lobby for the manager to arrive
to check us in. The guy who let us in told us she was a former decorator who
had personally decorated each of the themed rooms. We looked forward to
getting to ours! I should probably mention here, if we haven't before, that
the whole reason we were staying here for a single night was because we
screwed up when booking rooms originally. Calendar problems. We noticed,
about a week before our trip, that we had no place to stay on our day back
from Scotland. We found the Pavilion while planning our last trip to the UK
but decided we couldn't afford it. It's easily twice the rate of the other
hotels we were looking at, but it looked so cool! So anyway, the manager
arrived shortly and she was really nice. She booked us into her "best room"
the "White Days, Soul Nights" room... guess where? Yup top floor, up 3
narrow flights!
The room was nicely decorated and small. The TV was horribly mis-tuned so I
had to dick with it for an hour in order to get the standard 5 channels.
It had lots of white frilly stuff, drapes, bedspread etc. Bed was kinda
small but a bigger one would not have fit. We were allowed to smoke but were
provided no ashtrays.
After settling in, we went out in search of foodstuff. Found a pub but
realized too late it was geared toward tourists. The food was fine (I had a
lamb burger, Kel the Yorkshire pud). A very loud obnoxious 4-pack of
American teenage girls were seated at the table behind us which caused much
eye-rolling. One got spaghetti with vegetarian sauce... sigh. They quite
loudly explained to the nearby Germans that Yorkshire Pudding ISN'T REALLY
PUDDING!!! They wanted to make sure they didn't make the same mistake!!! I
think I heard the Germans groan and I KNOW I heard our waiter guffaw back in
the kitchen. I tipped our poor waiter double for putting up with them :)
After dinner we went ticky-tacky shopping, then headed back to the
hotel. Watched the semi-finals on Robot Wars on ch 4. Chaos II from Ipswich
vs. a yellow one. [Addendum 12-2000] Since returning Comedy Central has
started showing there own version of Robot Wars, called BattleBots. Nowhere
near as good, but some of the same contestants have shown up!
Called it a day and found the bed to be a bit stiff and lumpy. Tomorrow we'd
be switching to our next hotel. Yes we were disappointed with this hotel
but it would have been worse to have had to spend the night at Paddington!
