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The Soho area in London has made a comeback in recent times. This once seedy area is now very much London’s buzzing centre.

Soho today has a 24/7 culture and lively street life, as well as some of the best cafes, bars, restaurants and nightspots in London.

Here we present you some of Soho’s key highlights to help you have a fantastic time when you next visit:

* Plenty of bars, clubs and cafes on both Dean Street and Wardour Street. Try All Bar One on Dean Street or the Slug & Lettuce pub on Wardour Street.

* Bar Italia (Frith Street) is where the Italians themselves go for the best cappuccino in London. It’s hard to get a free seat but is always buzzing!

* Ronnie Scott’s is one of London’s most famous jazz venues and is right across the road from Bar Italia on Frith Street.

* The Curzon Soho cinema specialises in international films but also shows mainstream movies too. Its ground-floor cafe has superb cakes and drinks while there is also a lively basement bar to grab a drink before your movie.

* Chinatown is right in the heart of Soho and especially fun in the evenings. Do stop by the authentic Chinese shops and bakeries as well as the tempting restaurants. The Wong Kei Chinese restaurant on Wardour Street is a London institution - the service is so bad, it’s good! There are also good-value “all you can eat” buffets.

* Restaurants in Soho serve just about every cuisine you could wish for. If you are unsure what you fancy, just wander around and feast your eyes. You’ll find Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Malay, Korean, Italian, Indian, Thai…to name only a few of the mouthwatering options. Corean Chilli (Charing Cross Road) is a particular favourite!

The intense competition between restaurants in Soho means that prices are generally OK.

Take a few strides from Soho towards Leicester Square to enter one of London’s buzzing nightlife centres - it’s always full of atmosphere. Why not stop for an ice cream at the Haagen Dazs parlour or catch a movie at one of Leicester Square’s famous cinemas (it’s also where all the big movie premieres take place).

If nightclubs and bars are your thing, that’s another Soho “speciality”. You can spontaneously pop into almost any place you fancy depending on the music and atmosphere you most enjoy.

What if you prefer to chill out? Soho’s multitude of cafes are perfect to do just this and great fun for people watching too! Enjoy a light snack, a long drink, a latte or whatever else takes your fancy.

Since Soho is lively 24/7, you really get a sense of London’s vibrancy by being there. It’s buzzing on Sundays too!

Do check out the London Hotels Insight blog which presents further information on Soho including insider tips on the most stylish hotels and tantalising restaurants you’ll find in London.

Please check our London blog for independent advice to plan your ideal London visit. You can also read more about Soho hotels and find information on London’s ultimate hidden gems.

Tags: London England, London hotels, London Travel, Soho London, Travel
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The Fourth Plinth is located in Trafalgar Square, London and is traditionally used to display statues. This year it is being transformed into a space for living art as Antony Gormley shows off his ground-breaking “One and Other” project (until October 14th 2009).

The well-known artist has asked anyone who lives in the UK to come forward and “perform” on the plinth for one hour with the eyes of the world (via tv and webcam) gazing at them.

Many thousands of people applied for the 2,400 available places which have all been chosen at random. One person is standing on the plinth every hour (24/7!), for 100 days in total.

Each individual is free to do as they please on the plinth, providing it’s legal. A lot of participants are taking the opportunity to show the world everything they’ve got!

The artist’s own description of the project is shown on the London Hotels Insight blog (link below), which also links you to the live webcam showing the 24/7 “performance” in progress.

It is a truly path-breaking project and gives tourists visiting London an awesome perspective on Britain’s diverse, eccentric and fun-loving population. You can’t miss the opportunity to see it if you’re visiting London in summer or autumn 2009!

To allow you to stay as near to the event on Trafalgar Square as possible, here are a couple of suggested hotels that rate highly on TripAdvisor. They cover all possible budgets:

A 5 star hotel with great reviews

If you come to London with someone you wish to impress, you would be wise to consider One Aldwych. This is a hotel with amazing contemporary design (later copied by many others) but which also thrives on friendly and down-to-earth service.

From the moment you step into its impressive lobby, the hotel seems to caress you with its natural warmth.

I’ve been lucky enough to meet the hotel’s founder, Gordon Campbell Gray, who told me his goal is to make every guest’s stay “as exquisite as possible”.

There is more on One Aldwych at the London Hotels Insight blog, where you can also get the best rate from more than 30 different travel websites with a single click.

A cheap hotel with good reviews

If you’re on budget but still want to stay in this amazing area in the heart of Theatreland, you might want to consider the Travelodge in Covent Garden. It is only 10 minutes walk to Trafalgar Square.

You’ll feel smug about getting a functional, clean room in an amazing location for much less than other tourists with accommodation in the same area!

Guest reviews on TripAdvisor suggest that Travelodge Covent Garden is a steal for its modest room rate and unbeatable location.

The location of either of the above hotels is handy for checking out the Tate Modern gallery or to take a ride on the London Eye.

If you stay in this area you will also be in a convenient location for the fantastic markets and street performers in Covent Garden.

So if you intend to go to London in the summer or fall of 2009, make sure you visit the fourth plinth on Trafalgar Square!

Tags: europe, london, London hotels, London Travel, London trip planning, Travel, travel ideas
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Are London hotels as expensive as people say?

Visitors to London often complain about the high price of hotels. Are they right to do so?

Expensive is a relative term. You can have a wonderful priceless experience or spend little and find it poor value. Value is not easy to define.

What then does the hard data say? London apparently has the 5th most expensive hotels in the world, after Moscow, New York, Dubai and Venice (source: Hotels.com survey).

Another survey by Hogg Robinson showed London hotel prices in 10th place (not as dear as New York, Mumbai and Stockholm among others).

London is only expensive because lots of people want to visit the city for business and pleasure, which naturally keeps prices high. That is the bad news.

But there is good news too. You can still grab value for money in London hotels but only if you search carefully. To achieve this, you should use independent blogs (such as London Hotels Insight) rather than hotel or booking websites which just want you to reserve any hotel as quickly as possible.

Ready for more good news? A separate survey (from the Economist) looked at the most expensive cities for all spending (beyond just hotel prices): this discovered that Paris and Copenhagen for example are a lot more expensive than London.

Hence although London (and its hotels) may appear quite pricey to visitors, this must be understood in comparison with other benchmark cities.

The most important advice is to always book your hotel in London after searching out the best price on the internet. If you book based on just one website’s pricing, you will almost always be missing out on the best rate.

Never be fooled by a best online rate guarantee. It is often hard to enforce this in practice (just try to read the small-print!) as well as being time-consuming.

This article’s writer is a London hotel market “insider” who personally meets hoteliers and regularly compares online hotel rates for London. There is no doubt that there is wide variation between London hotel rates between different websites so you can easily lose money.

There is just one way to ensure that you obtain the very best London hotel deal: you need to use a “meta-search” tool which compares lots of different websites at the same time (preferably more than 20 or 30 sites). It is now as easy to do a one-click search of many websites for the best deal as it is to search a single website.

For example, London Hotels Insight has a price comparison tool which checks more than 30 of the world’s most trusted hotel booking sites to find the best rate in one click.

A hotel meta-search engine lets you feel secure that you’re getting the best possible deal. It also means you’re left with more money to enjoy London’s amazing bars, restaurants and theatres!

Tags: Cheap Hotels, cheap travel, destinations, hotels, hotels in london, jobs in hotels, london, London accommodation, London hotels, London Travel, metasearch, price comparison, Travel
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Is it really so hard to get a reasonably-priced hotel in London?

Visitors to London often complain about the high price of hotels. Are they right to do so?

Expensive is a relative term. You can have a wonderful priceless experience or spend little and find it poor value. Value is not easy to define.

So what does the hard data say? London comes 5th in the ranking of the world’s most expensive hotels, lagging behind Moscow, New York, Dubai and Venice (the source for this is Hotels.com).

Another survey by Hogg Robinson showed London hotel prices in 10th place (not as dear as New York, Mumbai and Stockholm among others).

London is only expensive because lots of people want to visit the city for business and pleasure, which naturally keeps prices high. That is the bad news.

But there is good news too. You can still grab value for money in London hotels but only if you search carefully. To achieve this, you should use independent blogs (such as London Hotels Insight) rather than hotel or booking websites which just want you to reserve any hotel as quickly as possible.

Ready for more good news? A separate survey (from the Economist) looked at the most expensive cities for all spending (beyond just hotel prices): this discovered that Paris and Copenhagen for example are a lot more expensive than London.

So while London hotels and London may seem expensive to tourists, this must be seen in the context of other leading city destinations.

The most important advice is to always book your hotel in London after searching out the best price on the internet. If you book based on just one website’s pricing, you will almost always be missing out on the best rate.

Do not be taken in by those so-called “best rate guarantees”. They are usually covered by plenty of legal wording to make it as hard as possible for you to enforce them.

The author of this article is an “insider” within the London hotel market and knows for a fact that some hoteliers charge different rates through different websites.

There is just one way to ensure that you obtain the very best London hotel deal: you need to use a “meta-search” tool which compares lots of different websites at the same time (preferably more than 20 or 30 sites). It is now as easy to do a one-click search of many websites for the best deal as it is to search a single website.

For example, the blog on London hotels linked below searches 30+ online booking websites to identify the best London hotel rate within a matter of seconds.

Everyone should use a hotel meta-search engine to get the best London hotel rate. By spending as little as possible on the hotel, it really frees up your budget to enjoy London to the max!

Tags: Cheap Hotels, cheap travel, destinations, hotels, hotels in london, jobs in hotels, london, London accommodation, London hotels, London Travel, metasearch, price comparison, Travel
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