What now feels like a very long time ago I was contacted by
a man called Jaleel on behalf of Travel Lodge to offer me a room in exchange
for a review on my blog. It could be anywhere in the country, I got complete
pick of where I wanted to go. As there was no date that it had to be used by, I
asked if I could go in October (I think I spoke to Jaleel in July!) as it was
mine and my boyfriends 3rd anniversary so it would tie in well. Of
course I picked to go to London, I wasn’t too fussed about location though as
everyone knows how easy it is to travel in London. We ended up picking Covent
Garden and it was booked for the 25th October.
A lot happened in the time between booking it and actually
going. At one point I tried to change the date I had booked, as I didn’t think
I was going to be able to go. For unfortunate reasons my boyfriend was unable
to go with me (just putting this out there, YES we are very much so still
together!) so I quickly enforced my mum to come with me instead. Don’t worry;
she was more than happy to!
We decided that mum would drive to Redbridge (the closest
and easiest tube station for us to get to) and we would get the tube in. As it
was a Saturday, of course London was packed and when we got to Redbridge we
couldn’t find anywhere to park. We quickly sat-naved the closest tube station
and after about 40 minutes of driving round in circles we found a tube station
and made out way to central London.
As my mum had stayed in the same hotel previously she (kind
of) knew where she was going. I knew that check in to the rooms was at 2pm
however we arrived at around 1.35pm so we thought that they would just let us
check in only to be met with if we wanted to check in before 2 we would have to
pay £10. I’m still not totally sure why, along with the fact we were literally
20 minutes early. Fair enough if we arrived at 12pm, I could understand but 20
minutes! Well we weren’t going to walk around with our bags or wait for that matter so reluctantly my
mum paid the fee and we were given our room key.
Our room was just your average standard room which was
perfect for us as we weren’t planning on spending much time in the room. We had
a huuuuge bed that was so comfortable! From our window we were looking out at a
block of run down flats, however flats surrounded the building so I reckon any
room you got would have the same view! This didn’t bother us much though, as we
weren’t going to be spending our time looking out the window. We dropped off
our bags and went out to shop.
As London is so busy it’s really hard to actually shop
(especially on a Saturday!). Saying that, I did get a few bits! But I would
really hate it if London was my closest town to go shopping in, it’s too much!
We had originally planned to go and see a show however my mum suggested we go
to the Hippodrome casino which is in Leicester Square. We also arranged to meet
with one of my mums best friends who moved to London a few years ago. The
casino was amazing, I was pretty much speechless the whole night! I held off
betting though, as I know I would have spent all my money. I put on a few bets
and won about £100 which I was obviously very happy with and walked away. Then
we made our way back to the hotel.
We got back to the hotel at about 11.50pm so we knew we
weren’t too late to get food as we were both starving. My mum told me that last
time she was there she got one of the pizzas, which was delicious so we decided
we’d both get a pizza. They were £9 each which is very expensive considering
they were ones that I know you can buy from Tesco for £4 and you just heat up
in the oven! We went over to the bar which had 2 other couples there. We waited
patiently for about 15 minutes without saying anything, then I turned to my mum
and just said ‘were blatantly being ignored’.
I’m still not too sure why we were ignored but it looked
like one of the couples had been at the bar all night and the man serving clearly only wanted to serve these people (even getting them an apple,
peeling, cutting it up and covering it in sugar for them, just because they
mentioned they fancied it!). The man came over to us after another 10 or so
minutes and asked what we wanted. I said ‘can we have 2 pizzas please’ and when
he asked what flavours I turned to my mum to ask what she wanted. When I turned
back, he had gone. Not disappeared, just walked off to serve someone else. By
this point I was getting very frustrated and quite angry at the situation. We
stood there for another 15 or so minutes thinking that maybe he had put through
our order and we had to wait for the food. When it was made clear to us our
pizzas weren’t being cooked, we were just standing there like idiots, I made a
comment quite loudly hoping that he would hear. One of the couples that were
standing over the other side of the bar then said to him ‘there are two ladies
standing there waiting to be served’. He looked at us, then turned back to him
and said ‘oh yeah I know, they want pizzas but *mumbled his words*’ and carried on laughing and joking with this other
couple.
Luckily at this moment another lady walked through the door
and served us straight away or I would have seriously lost my temper. We had
been standing there waiting for about 45 minutes, being blatantly ignored. By
this time it was gone 12.30am and we just wanted to go to bed. We were hungry,
annoyed and quite frankly didn’t want to then spend £20 on two pizzas. I said
to the lady who served us ‘we have been waiting 40 minutes, can we have these
delivered to our room to save us any more time?’ and she told me ‘not unless
you pay’ which I DEFINITELY was NOT doing. So we had to wait 20 MORE MINUTES
for our pizzas to be cooked. We went off to our room to eat our very long
awaited pizzas but of course, not without disruption!!
The vending machine had ate my mums money so I had to go to
the front desk and….. I wont even get into that. It was another 20 minutes
before we even got to our room! We both ate less than half of our pizza and
went to sleep. HOWEVER we did have a very nice sleep!!
We
checked out the next morning without any problems and that was that.
It’s such a shame that we received such appalling service
because I’ve stayed in Travel Lodges before without any hassle. I think the
night and room we stayed in was worth about £160 and if I had paid that I would
have been very disappointed. In fact, if I had paid I think I would have
actually complained and asked for a refund. I cannot fault the beds and rooms
for the price you pay, but the service needs a bit of work! And after looking
at reviews online, I think a lot of people would agree. I found 4 out of the 5
members of staff I came in to contact with were unhelpful and just damn right
rude. I would never expect to receive that kind of service anywhere! We did
have a nice stay, it was easy and very central but just a shame about the
service.
*This room was free of charge from Travel Lodge in exchange for a review, however all opinions are my own
