Questions for those who live in London, or know it well*:

Mrs. Riko and I are planning a trip there in October and found a good package deal for air and hotel. One hotel option that looks fairly good is the Thistle Kensington Gardens (formerly known as the Hospitality Inn), which is on Bayswater road overlooking Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, according to the web. the nearest Tube stop is Queensway, the site says.

Can anyone say whether this would be a good location for us to stay? Is that a reasonably safe neighborhood? Would it be fairly easy to get around town from there? Are there good pubs and stuff nearby, or would we always be hopping on a train or bus to do things?

We're hoping to see Mr. Scruff at the Forum, Lemon Jelly at the Brixton Academy, DJ Yoda at the Social and Freelance Hellraiser + Osymyso at location TBA (according to the Hellraiser himself). Would the Kensington location present any major problems for getting back from those gigs? (If anyone is attending any of these and wants to meet for a hello pint, let me know.)

Any advice would be appreciated, and if anyone has specific comments about that hotel, that would be appreciated too.


* Yeah, the Avs are from Australia, but there seems to be a lotta Londoners round here, so I figured I'd ask.

don't know the hotel itself riko, but the area is a very central location & very safe - you'll have no trouble getting around transport wise.

Basically everywhere you're planning to go is scattered around (as is everything in london!) so you'll probably be using tubes/buses/cabs to get back from gigs (tubes stop runnning about 12/1am), but that's an inevitable part of being in london. Pub/bar wise the best things are in the east end (shorditch area) but it's not the nicest area to stay.

i'm sure myself, simon & viv will be more than happy to help show you both around & meet up for a few outings! let us know your dates & i'lll check out if there's anything else on that you might like...

Thanks, Emma. Sounds like the hotel should work well for us.

We plan to be there from the 10th to the 19th, and hope to work a jaunt to liverpool in there, too. Scruff is on the 10th, Lemon Jelly the 11th, Yoda I think on the 14th and Osymyso/Freelance on the 16th. Lemme know if you hear of other fun stuff happening.

And we'd love to meet up. Just don't expect us to last until 7:30 a.m.

i'm not always that hardcore!

um...see dirty where i say pretty much the same things as emma.

If you ever need to know the time, look at Big Ben, or the Mona Lisa.

I'm going to London too.. ! But about a week before you. I'll arrive in the morning the 30. aug, and will be leaving again the following monday I think.. too bad.
But if anyone knows of something I should be seeing this weekend or have a good place to see what's going on, please tell..

Golly, how did this thread get resurrected by a spammer? And how did my name get changed to Heckta?