female traveling alone in london cheap hotel

Again I suggest.... buy and read the RS guides. Use the search engine on this website to get answers to this question. I JUST posted a reply on Where to Stay in London. Question asked today. Not like it hasn't been asked and answered again and again! Scroll down. BTW Cheap, London, Paris and Rome are NOT synonymous, especially London and Paris. Price wise the make NYC look like Jersey (no offense).

As Claudia suggested, cheap is a relative term when dealing with London. However, you can also search booking sites such as Booking.com to see what's available, costs, etc. If you want a truly budget accommodation, try easyHotel.com. They have very, very basic, small, but clean rooms, for cheap, but don't expect any amenities, or even furniture, besides your bed! For a budget traveller who doesn't plan on spending any time in their room other than to sleep, they work. As one reviewer suggested, they are "cheap human storage"...lol...

You can check out the London School of Economics. They rent spare dorm rooms and paratments to tourists. I believe they start around 60 GBP per night and that should be within your budget. Be aware that their site sometimes has problems with some web browsers. If it indicates that there is nothing available, just email or phone them to double check. www.lsevacations.co.uk/

I like Vancouver Studios - great location, very safe and very clean. Helpful staff. I have stayed in budget hotels near some of the mainline stations (e.g. Kings Cross) with my husband and would not choose to do so again - especially alone. These areas can be a bit dodgy and the hotels depressing with very few amenities.

The highly-regarded and well-located Lime Tree Hotel near Victoria Station has single rooms for 99 GBP, a bit over your budget but safe and reliable: http://www.limetreehotel.co.uk/

thanks everyone. i might do the lime tree if its available. does anyone know how far is the eurostar from london? is there a part of town is should be looking at that is walking distance from most of the attractions?

I'm a 55+ female and I stayed at the Victoria EasyHotel in the fall of 2010 and found it safe and clean. Yes it is VERY small and sparse but the location was good and the price great. There is a new hotel along the same lines called Tune Hotel and they now have 3 locations in London. I plan a return visit to London this coming fall and plan on trying the location near the Imperial War Museum. Check out their web site and take a look at the room pictures. They are exactly what they advertise, small and inexpensive but with great locations.

To a hotel convenient to the iconic attractions in London choose hotels near to Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Westminster, Mayfair. They are an easy walk from Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar square, Big Ben, Horse guardsWestminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace. Also on the south side of the river near Westminster Bridge (across the river from Big Ben).
However, most of these area are generally more expensive For attraction "convenience" do not choose hotels near St Pancras (Eurostar), Kings Cross, Paddington, Euston Station- even Vcitoria. Although the areas may be safe etc you will need transportation (Tube or bus) to get to the main sights If cost is important try and be within the Circle line Tube area and close to a tube station

mel, You might also have a look at Cartref House, which is also in the London Victoria neighborhood (close to the Lime Tree). It's not luxurious, but very comfortable and the owners are wonderful! It's fairly close to many of the "touristy things" and also close to London Victoria Tube, which allows access to a much wider area. There's a fantastic Wine Bar just across the street. If you're using the EuroStar, you'll need to get to London St. Pancras. It's an easy trip (theoretically about 18 minutes) using the Victoria line (direction Walthamstow Central) to King's Cross / St. Pancras. Once you arrive at King's Cross, you can walk to the EuroStar station through the Mall. You may find it helpful to have a look at This Website. Note that you MUST check-in for EuroStar AT LEAST 30-minutes prior to departure. You'll also clear French Passport control at the same time. Happy travels!

ken, thanks for the info. I do want to take the eurostar to paris and was wondering if staying in victoria was going to be a long way. sorry for all the questions but i dont have the time to buy the rs book. i found a very good airfare for the week of may 13 and i have been on the comp. all day to find out where i want to stay and if they have any vacancies. i feel like im taking a crash course of the towns layout in paris and london. ugh! lol so where should i stay at in london thats close to touristy things and close to the eurostar? should i just stick with the victoria area? other quick quest. when taking the eurostar to paris, is the gare du nord the best station to go to? is that station close to all the "touristy things" in paris? ie eiffel tower. lol
can any1 recommend a place to stay in paris as well? close to attractions and eurostar?

mel, When I read your last post, all kinds of "red flags" popped up! If you're planning to be in London on May 13th, you'll need to get busy and book a Hotel SOON! It's already a bit too late, so you may have to take what you can get. I would suggest contacting the Hotel I listed in my earlier reply straight away, to find out if they have a vacancy. If so, get this booked today! You may have to modify your budget accordingly, as prices have already started to increase in advance of the Olympics. Regarding the RS Guidebooks, if you have a Kindle or iPad, you can download the E-book versions in a few minutes. If you'll be travelling with a Netbook or iPod Touch, you can also download the free Kindle Reader and then download the books (the cost for the books is very reasonable). It's a bit difficult to view the Maps on the E-books (gets better with practice), but the text is fine. Cheers!

Hi Mel, For Paris. Eurostar goes to Gare du Nord. From there you can take a taxi (often a long line) or the metro. The only problem you might have with the metro is if you have a heavy suitcase and end up having to climb a flight of stairs to get to street level. Paris is divided into sections called arrondissements which are numbered. You can tell which arron. anything is in by it's zip code (last 2 digits). The 1st to the 7th are most central. The sights in Paris are somewhat spread out so nothing is going to be close to everything. It is better to get a hotel that is within a block or two of a metro station so you can get around efficiently. I like the 4th (the Marais quarter) and the 5th-6th (Left Bank - Latin quarter) which are usually less expensive than the others.

"sorry for all the questions but i dont have the time to buy the rs book." " i feel like im taking a crash course of the towns layout in paris and london. ugh! lol" Frankly you could have read or at least scanned both guidebooks in that amount of time. Would have had at least a dozen options of places to stay in your price range, some small maps to show you where the "must sees" are in both cities, get a better understanding of public transportation, recommendations for restaurants, etc., etc., etc. Glad you got a great deal and are going to get to experience two fabulous cities. Hope the must sees you want go to are open and you are not disappointed. You'd find that info in the books as well.

Mel, For London, here is a link to the YHA Hostels. There are several of them in London. The one pictured in the link is near St. Pancras, where you will board Eurostar. It is also centrally located so you can walk to many of the "must see" attractions. Not a posh neighborhood. Look at the other YHA hostels at the bottom of the web page, especially the Oxford St. and Earl's Court. These are centrally located, too. Click the "book now" button to the left of the hostel picture to check rates and availability. http://www.yha.org.uk/hostel/london-st-pancras Cannot help you about Paris; perhaps you could Google search youth hostels there for a cheap price.

im not having any luck!these hotels are booked: morgan house, lime tree, cherry hotel, main house, cartref house. i think i should look out of victoria i found 1 place but this 200 a night called b&b belgravia for a studio. that is way too much for 6 nights!

Try Lancaster Hall -www. lancaster-hall-hotel.co.uk. It is just north of Hyde Park and is reasonable. It is 87 pounds for 2 and less for a single. We have stayed there several times and think it is very nice. Has a good breakfast. We will be staying there again this fall. Good luck.

The hostels I mentioned may be the only lodgings in town not booked up. Price will run from $50. to $99. American dollars, and the hostels are fairly nice; not posh, but just as nice as many low end hotels. Book yourself a family room for 24 pounds, and have the room all to yourself.

yikes! iam about to book a place some1 mentioned on this thread. its called Tune HOtel in Westminister. Its like an easy hotel i guess. its 65 pounds a night for a double bed. has any 1 been here?

mel, you say you do not have time to buy an RS guide book, as suggested, and yet you have tons of time to be on the internet and ask questions on this website. How does that happen? Maybe you would rather have others do your planning?

LSE High Holborn, 56.50 pounds a night ($91US), available for your dates. And, in their shiny new refurbished rooms, you'd be one of their first guests. Downsides... shared bathroom, student residence during term time. Not sure if you'd really be sharing with any students, as it's their newly refurbed section. I've stayed at the hall before, great location, great value. 2 blocks to tube, to a nice Sainsbury's, etc. http://www.lsevacations.co.uk/

thanks every1 for the suggestions :) i will save these recommendations if i ever go back to london. i notice some r mentioned in the rs guide and the others werent.
idk y people are getting mad at me for not buying the guide? must be sales people? lol this site is to get travelers advice you cant get only from a guide. if steve just wanted us to buy his book he wouldnt of put a link called "travelers helpline," there are some questions a guide cant answer for u.

@jewel thank you a tons!!!! for mentioning the tube hotel. some places mentioned here were all completly booked. and i almost gave up in seaching and going to london. it not my ideal hotel but its close to where i want to be and it was available. lol thanks so much :D

the sales people remark was a joke. haha i did skim through the book a couple of weeks ago when i wasnt really planning on going to london. i remember there wasnt that many hotel listings for $ and i believe i got way more $ listings from this link. i do believe the tune hotel is not listed in the book i think only that other hotel that is similar called easy hotel. all of the hotels that were in my price range are booked and it was time consuming to email some of the hotels and wait a day to find out they were booked. i found the tube hotel put in my dates and it said it was available and i got it right away. i stop being picky when i started to realize it was hard to find a vacancy and i had until the 23rd of this month to take advantage of the air special. my main concern was to find a hotel asap and book a flight because im leaving in 3wks. the tube is by the london eye and all the touristy things i wanted to be by. and i dont care about the size of the room. im skinny, traveling w a small bag and the room has a full size bed and a window and thats all i need. lol I I really wanted to stay at the lime tree, but they were completly book for the whole month of may and they only have 4 days open in the month of june. Ariane was really helpful with giving me other hotels to try without me even asking and when i told her those were booked she gave me other hotels which where also booked. if i ever go back to london i will for sure stay here. great customer service and always respond to emails, also the main house in notting hill did the same.
Now that i got the important thing out of the way. I can now relax and buy the book online and get ricks travel tips.

Tune, not tube. Tune Hotel. For a tube station, you're right across the street from Lambeth North Station. It's not that bad for walking... a short walk to the Imperial War Museum, 10 minutes to the Parliament Buildings and Big Ben. But, you'll likely want a tube pass of some kind, so do look into it and figure out what you want to do. On the plus side for not having windows, it's rather close to the Waterloo train tracks, so that'll likely cut down on noise.

I was the first to suggest that you buy the RS guidebooks because it's OBVIOUS you've not traveled. Sincerely believed they would be an easy and practical way for you to learn about European travel. I don't work for Rick, am not a sales person. STILL believe you should have bought and read the London and Paris guides before you posted on the Helpline. Nearly ever one of your questions are addressed and answered in those guides.

I'm with Claudia on this one. I can't see where RS would ever suggest a place in Elephant and Castle with many tiny "rooms" that have no windows and you have to pay extra to get a towel and extra for a TV, etc. Sounds like the Ryanair of "hotels". Yet so many places in the book and others would actually be in much better locations for about the same money.

BTW it may say Westminster in the description but it is most positively over the river in Lambeth. I guess they get away with it by forgetting to put "Bridge Road" at the end. It is valid to call it "Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth" but to call it "Westminster" is a bit of a cheek...

mel you can check a hotels reviews by simply googling the name of the hotel and the word reveiws. I would and do alway check review,, make sure no bed bug or super dirty etc. I stayed at Base2Stay Kensington, but you are right its probaly booked by now.

don't you have to share a bathroom in a hostel. im in my late 30's and have a bad knee. so i cant cant run away from my killer if its like that movie hostel. lol im fine where im at the waterloo station is perfect because it disable accessable and i can avoid stairs and also my hotel has a lift. it was also hard to find a hotel with a lift. thanks for the response though :)

Mel, For convenience I stay in the Kings Cross/St Pancras area, three Tube lines stop at Kings Cross, and numerous B&Bs are there, some of them inexpensive... located on Argyle Street or Argyle Square. Also, as pointed out above, there's a good hostel on Euston Road, parallel to St. Pancras Station. It's the YHA hostel St Pancras at 79-81 Euston, tel # is 0845/3719344, basically across from the station.

I know you already booked your hotel, but this is advice for the future! For a hostel, it would depend on if you have a shared bathroom or not. Many hostels do have single rooms you can book, which could or could not have a shared bathroom. I've been travelling in hostels since I was in my early twenties...and now in my late twenties I still used three hostels for my trip a few weeks ago to Ireland. I choose to stay at hostels that have female-only dorms, with 4 beds, and one bathroom for the room. It is a nice way to meet some people - all ages stay in hostels, although it does tend to mostly be people in their early 20s. I don't know if you've booked a hotel yet for Paris, but I stayed at Familia Hotel on rue des ecoles twice some time ago, and really enjoyed it.

Glad you found a hotel in your price range. As for your question about sharing a bathroom in a hostel - yes, unless you get a single private hostel room that's ensuite (and that's often the same price as a decent budget hotel - so I'd go for the hotel over the hostel unless I was staying a number of nights and needed to do laundry and/or wanted access to a kitchen to prepare some of my own meals). Also, if you've got problems with your knee, you'd have to ask a hostel to hold a bottom bunk for you in a shared room as I've stayed in more than a few hostels where I was the last in the room and got a top bunk with no ladder and needed to perform circus acrobatics to shimmy up the bed frame in the dark to my bed. I don't have a bum knee, but I would imagine it would have sucked trying to do that with an old injury.

If you want private room and private bathroom you can get them for 150 a night for sure in any of the 10 places in this link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/may/06/top-10-budget-hostels-london If you don't care about meeting new people, you can also get a good place in a chain called Premier Inn at this link:
http://www.premierinn.com/en/ I've stay at the one at Old street before, totally nice and affordable.