Jan 13, 20163 min read

Weekend at the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel London

For some reason everyone seemed to find my plan to visit London right before my trip home to Kenya rather amusing.

I essentially went for a leaving party for a friend who is going to…. Kenya. In my defence, I love London and I had a free weekend at the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel thanks to the very generous prize I won in Cannes.

Check out the 1920’s Lunch I went to in Cannes here

It was also a great opportunity to catch up with my friend Siobhan who wasn’t heading back to Nairobi for Christmas.

First impressions of the St. Pancras Renaissance were great. The building is just beautiful and I think it looks even better in the evening.

The lobby was incredibly warm and festive with plenty of people milling about or lounging on the comfy sofa chairs.

We checked into our twin room in the Barlow Wing.

It was nice, comfortable, and very spacious for central London, but there was no “wow factor”. Also the view of a grey wall was a little disappointing.

I had similar feelings about the bathroom, it was perfectly fine but it didn’t make an impression. I did have a snoop online at some of their suites and they looked fantastic! So if you are planning on staying here it’s probably worth it to spend that bit extra and upgrade to a suite if you can.

Not my room – this is the Haywood Suite

Where I really take issue with this hotel is when I logged into the wifi I discovered it cost a shocking £9.75 a day!!!!

Is it just me that thinks wifi should be included in the room rate? I honestly can’t stand when hotels do this, especially when they are charging 5 star rates. Wifi is essential, I start to feel nauseous when I’m unplugged for too long.

Ironically, if you went down to the lobby you could pick up the FREE signal from the train station next door. Ugh.

Ok rant over. After settling into our room Siobhan and I met up with our friend Amar and strolled across to Carluccio’s in St. Pancras station for a bite to eat.

So sorry for the terrible quality of this photo and the random London badge, I saved it from my snap story!

On the plus side of the Renaissance, if you are coming in to London by national rail or Eurostar you simply can’t beat this hotel in terms of location… it is literally attached to the station.

Once at Carluccio’s we tucked into some tasty pasta dishes and sipped on some much needed wine after a long week!

We made great plans to be on time for the leaving party and then of course failed miserably. Eventually we sorted ourselves out and joined the rest of the group in Shoreditch.

Cocktails at the Booking Room in the Renaissance

We went to the Hoxton Pony which was packed and played some niche R & B music. Despite not knowing any of the songs it was a great fun and lovely to see the London crew again!

Follow me on snapchat: ashkenya

It ended up being a rather late night so Siobhan I just about managed to drag ourselves out of bed at the crack of 10.30am to make it in time for breakfast.

Morning Recovery

Such a good decision! There was an excellent spread with all the naughty treats you could want.

The Booking Room – where breakfast is served

We then went back to bed… I know so lazy!

Like the nocturnal creatures we are, we re-surfaced as the sun went down and went in search of food.

We ended up in Narnia.

Ok it actually looked more like this..

Welcome to Winter Wonderland

Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park… the home of flashing lights, ice skating, and endless stalls serving mulled wine.

Perfect!

Of course the churros were not enough to fill us so we left Hyde Park and made our way to SoHo for drinks and dinner at Lobster and Burger which was delicious!!