My wife and I will be in London for 3 days at the end of Sept. on the way to Italy for 4 weeks and then 2 more days in London on the way back to the USA. We are looking for a Hilton hotel for the price of Motel 6 in the center of London with easy access for we are challenged by too much walking . Anyone have a gem to share?

I'm afraid I don't have specific recommendations for you, just some suggestions to help with the search. In general, London hotel prices tend to be high; I doubt you will find true "Motel 6" prices for a luxury hotel anywhere central. Then again, in the current climate, if a lot of people are cancelling bookings, you may benefit. You might try the LateRooms site; we've found that one helpful. Or you could google "Cheap rooms central London" - you'll get a lot of options, among them this one and this one and this one. (Note: TravelLodge hotels, which are mentioned on one of those sites, usually will NOT provide luggage storage for you prior to checkin or after checkout. If you will need this, always ask when you make a booking.)

If walking, and especially stairs, are a problem, be sure to ask any hotel/B&B you contact about accessibility, which floor the rooms are on, and whether there is a lift (elevator). Please remember that US "1st floor" = UK "Ground floor," US "2nd floor" = UK "1st floor," etc.

Good luck! (And welcome to SlowTalk.)

Have you looked through our Slow Travel UK - Hotel Reviews?

We are in London now, staying at the Travelodge High Holborn (a block from the Travelodge Covent Garden). We got the room at the supersaver rate (26£ per night) they advertise on their site. It's a no frills hotel(no hairdryer, toiletries, phone, etc) but clean and well located. It's certainly not a Hilton but could well suit your needs.

Hi Superdsr.

I live in London so hope I can help a little. The thing is, without knowing what kind of areas you want to visit and what you'd like to do, it's a little hard to know where you'd be best placed.

For example - Covent Garden is a lovely central area which is very near to all of the theatres and all that kind of stuff. You could walk to Oxford Street and Soho. You would have a lot of pretty good places to eat around where you were. There are tons of shops and a fun market. It's a fun place to be, I enjoy going there quite a bit.

Knightsbridge, Chelsea and Kensington are also good areas. These are also near good shopping - Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Kensington High Street... they're all not too far away.

Marylebone is a very cute (although expensive to live/shop) area which is near to Regent's Park and offers great shopping on Marylebone High St. Personally -and this is a very personal choice! - this is where I'd choose to stay. It's safe, not too touristy, lots of character and nice little shops. Some people don't like it. I do.

Also, a little randomly, this place:

http://www.bb-belgravia.com/

always gets good reviews. It's very centrally located in Belgravia - an expensive, fairly nice residential area which is near everything but doesn't offer all that much in and of itself. I would say this would be a great choice of place to stay. It's £100/night which is pretty cheap for London (you can get cheaper, for sure, by using those discount hotel websites and/or staying in hostels, but I personally would say this is a reasonable ballpark figure to aim for).

www.sawdays.co.uk is a good website with a searcahable database of places to stay in London. I would truly not hesitate to stay somewhere recommended in these guides - they specialise in unique, non-chain, characterful, 'local' accommodation. Not always cheap (but sometimes cheap), but always good.

I'm sorry I haven't been able to recommend many places to stay, but if you can narrow down where you would like to stay, that would help. Bear in mind also that if you have great difficulty walking a fairly short distance, I would say you would be better off just to pick a place you wanted to stay and use the tube or taxis to get around. I don't think there is anywhere you could stay and not have to walk at least 30 minutes to get to some of the places you'd want to go.

Hope my ramblings are vaguely useful. Please ask for more information when you know a bit more about where you want to go and what you'd like to do. I hope you'll love London.

Thanks to all of you for your advice. I have found the Hoxton Hotel and will be offering a review after our stay. It opens Sept. 1st and sounds like everything I was looking for. And it was only 59 pounds per night.
More later.

Hoxton is THE place to be! Very funky part of London. If you will be there over a weekend you'll find the area crowded with clubbers etc. into the wee hours. There are also quite a lot of interesting "designer" shops that have opened up there. Have fun.

I agree that this is a good area if you enjoy clubbing and going to fun but expensive bars. It will be full of City workers going out. That is a great price and I hope you enjoy your stay.

I don't want to criticise your choice but you should probably be aware that this hotel has got a lot of publicity recently (it's owned by a guy who runs a popular sandwich chain - Pret a Manger, it's pretty good) and it is, based on their publicity and choice of location, very much targetted towards the business market. It's walking distance to the City (which contains offices and that's about it, besides the bars and restaurants aimed at the City workers) and is in one of the most popular areas for City workers to go out after work. I am not trying to discourage you from staying there BUT it would not be an area I would choose to stay in for ease of access to tourist attractions and things you might want to do. If you are big into clubbing, though, I think you will enjoy it, but you didn't mention this in your original post. There are a LOT of nightclubs and bars nearby and it's incredibly trendy. Dress smartly or you may not be allowed into some /a lot of the clubs around there.

If, however, you want to be able to walk to cute coffee shops, pleasant parks, and see a bit more of what I would consider to be the real London - I wouldn't say this is a great place to stay. If you are happy to travel to see the tourist stuff, again, this is a great place to stay. There is definitely some stuff within say a mile's walk of where it's located which would be fun to go to - like Spitalfields Market and Brick Lane.

I hope this doesn't come off like a criticism of your choice of hotel, just wanted to provide you with an opinion of the area and what it might offer you as a tourist. It's just my personal opinion though and, as I said above, where to base yourself in London depends hugely on what you want to do. If you are a clubber, you will love Hoxton!!

I'll be very very interested to hear about it after you visit.

I'm not sure I agree with you Jane. The hotel is actually closer to some of the most historic parts of London. St Paul's and even the Tower will be within (probably) a 20 minute walk and it's straight on down to the river from there with all the activity on the Southbank. And if they want to chill in a "neighbourhood", Clerkenwell is walkable to the west. Of course, they'll have to take a bus or tube to the West End from there, but that's hardly an inconvenience. I mean people love staying in South Ken but you have to take the bus or tube from there to loads of tourist places and no one bats an eyelid at that. I think Hoxton is an interesting base for a short stay.

It's certainly a matter of opinion - I guess we have interpreted "challenged by walking" differently... I took it to mean that the OP/his wife was perhaps disabled and did not want to have to walk any further than a couple of minutes. Still, there's nowhere to stay that's 2 minutes from everywhere you'd want to go. I just feel personally that Hoxton has an atmosphere that is very corporate during the day and very 'clubby' at night. It's definitely not my scene (female, mid twenties) but it's certainly a central enough place and if the OP doesn't mind a 20-40 minute walk there's plenty that's walkable. That price is great though and, as I rambled on about before, it's hard to know which area would be good without some idea of interests.

Yes Jane I did mean my wife can't walk too far but we don't mind taxi's. I was trying to get as close to Old London as possible. I lived in England as a child and have great memories I would like to share with my wife. We lived in Alconbury and going to London was wild and exciting.We left in 1959 so I am sure there have been just a few changes. The Hoxton area sounds just right for a Mid 20's female?

I hadn't seen anything about the Hoxton Hotel before this weekend when I came across this. It looks like you've found something very interesting. I like his logic - and his sandwiches, come to that. What better reason for booking?