Hyde Park

The room cleaning service and the location were the only positives. It's a five-minute walk from Paddington Station, with good connections across the city. But the stay was miserable, and I wouldn't return to Hyde Park Apartments. I've travelled a lot and can put up with compromises, but a good night's sleep is the bare minimum for a place to stay, and we didn't get one here. We booked for three people and were promised a double bed and a sofa bed. The so-called sofa bed was just a folded, worn-out couch with no mattress, hard and uneven with a hollow in the middle that left my back aching. We slept on it for 9 (!) nights. The double bed was small and not very comfortable either, though at least it was a bed. For €1,500, I wasn't expecting a luxury hotel, but being charged for a sofa bed and given a couch without a mattress made me feel cheated. It was dirty and uncomfortable too, and that's unacceptable, especially in such an affluent part of a very affluent city. The room was tiny for three guests. The closet was small and already partly filled with blankets, an iron, and other things, so only one suitcase fit. The other two had to stay on the floor. The couch was so close to the kitchen counter that we had to move it to open some drawers, and its position meant cooking at the stovetop while kneeling on it. The induction hob had just two zones, but the pans were larger than them. Using both at once meant the pan on the right touched the control panel and activated it, so we could effectively use only one zone. It was weak too, and boiling water took forever. The closet door only opened halfway because the spring-loaded door closer blocked it. It was also unbearably hot and humid at night once outside temperatures went above 25-26 degrees Celsius. The room was only a few square metres, with a tiny sash window that let in practically no air, even on windy days. There was no air conditioning or dehumidifier, just a noisy, ineffective fan. We ended up propping the front door open with a suitcase to get some air and sleep. The bathroom had no outside opening either, and became unbearably humid after just two minutes in the shower. In a world with rising temperatures, places need to adapt. I'll put it plainly: paying not cheaply for a sofa bed and finding a dirty, hard couch with no mattress made me feel frankly cheated. I hope to return to London, perhaps to Paddington, but I won't be staying at Hyde Park Apartments again.