noplasticshowers

The Mandeville Hotel is worth not visiting.  Just don’t go.  And whatever you do, do not ignore all the red flags on your way to not staying there. Like say, the inability to book a room category in a reasonable process.  Or emails that take three days to answer.  Or a room that not only is not ready when you arrive for five nights, but isn’t even worth the wait. Those kinds of red flag.

Billing itself as a “boutique hotel,” everything about the hotel itself is a stretch.  What the Mandeville turns out to be, is a business hotel gussied up in an ill-fitting hand-me-down suit with a very wide tie that doesn’t match.  But his sister is nice. Some people may be fooled. We are not.

We arrived from an excellent flight across the pond in United Polaris kind of wanting a good espresso and a shower (not necessarily in that order). We did end up getting a nice breakfast on a brilliant bright morning at the Ivy about a block from the hotel.  You see, the one very good thing about the Mandeville is its location smack dab in the middle of Marylebone.  You may recall from previous entries here in this spectacular blog that the Ivy is a top notch brunch chain (see Manchester and London entries).

In any case, our executive suite (so to speak) was ready when brunch was over.  But what a disappointment room 105 was.  Don’t stay in this room: weird bank of windows directly over the noisy-at-night restaurant, overlooking an alley of sorts, decor from that decade where polyesther was a good thing, uncomfortable couches.  Just all around terrible.  This room should be demoted to a much lesser category…like “very large broom closet” or “place to store old wallpaper swatches.  We only stayed in this room one night because the other three rooms in our reserved category were not available.  Right.

But judge for yourself!  I mean look at that wallpaper.  And the way the bathroom opens directly to the bed.

The shower was not plastic. Instead it was dangerous. Fortunately nobody broke a leg during our one night in this room. The shower was very nice, danger aside.

When you’re in Marylebone, retail therapy is in order. We spent time wandering the shops, hitting up me+em, theory, selfridges, varvatos, and more. Too much money was spent, but when you are a country mouse like we are, all of the city things are so shiny!

On our first day in London we found Scales bar which is well worth a revisit. Excellent cocktails (limited but creative and nicely concocted).

Fortunately, we were able to switch rooms to Executive Suite 216 after our first night (which was ridiculously overpriced for what it was). 216 was much better situated in the new purple part of the hotel. But the suite itself was still small and very poorly laid out. We’re sorry, but a bathroom opening directly on the bed is just not classy in the least.

The bathroom was much better. So what made us dislike this hotel so much? Well on our last night in London (a Wednesday night no less), a private party rented out the restaurant and bar and proceeded to put on a loud, obnoxious disco starting around 9pm and stretching nicely to 1am. Since we were to be up at 5:00am to fly to Dublin this was not a good thing. Complaints to management on checkout were ignored (so far anyway). We do plan to ride this one down to completion.

In the meantime, by no means stay at the Mandeville. Stay anywhere else.

Of course, London is a fantastic place to visit, and we had some very good experiences this round…

We spent some time at Hyde park checking out the icebergs.

We spent some time conducting business (which by the way will bring us to London regularly, but not again to the Mandeville).

We spent some time at both Tate galleries (Tate Modern and Tate Collection) and on a boat between. If you like the Kandinsky below, check out the others.

And we hit a number of excellent restaurants, including Roka, Carlotta, Tamarind, Chez Roux.

You will find stunning art at Henson’s Bar (in Mimi’s hotel). Apparently Mimi was a collector. We had excellent drinks surrounded by even better art. Need a cult classic like a Paper Plane or a Industry Sour? Of course you do.

Closing out our stay at the Mandeville was the coup de grace. The staff in the morning had no power to make us whole, and the manager who was instructed to get in touch never did. One showerhead for the Mandeville, we will not return.