A Room With A View ~ 24Nov14

I decided I would have an overnight stay in London for my Birthday and as it was my 60th, I decided to do it in style. I had a room booked in the Shangri-La Hotel at the top of the Shard, the tallest building in Europe. At pre-reception on the ground floor, they check to see you have a reservation and then you are escorted to the lifts where a security man very politely introduces himself and asks very politely if he could x-ray your bag. No other searches. He then calls the lift which goes straight to floor 35 which is where you register/sign in and where the bar and restaurant are. You are then escorted to your room, which was two floors up, where I was asked if this was the view I wanted but as it was on the south east corner I said I would prefer a view of the city. After apologisng for giving me the wrong room, he went off to see if he could do better and was back 5 minutes later apologising for the delay and we went up 5 more floors and I had a room on the north east corner and the view I wanted. First thing you notice in the room is that you sink into the soft carpet. Decoration is basic oriental in style, hotel being Chinese owned, and I’m not sure about the heated toilet seat but although toilet paper is supplied there are also water jets in the toilet bowl for that purpose, which I was told is preferred by customers from the east. No I didn’t try it. Food, forget it. £38 for breakfast, £22 for a burger, £4 for fries and £4 for a can of Coke from the mini bar. Fortunately there is a McDonalds and Starbucks across the road from the entrance. I was watching Honk Kong/Thai/Vietnamese/Japanese telly. No idea what they were saying, but it was different. They don’t have a Bible on the bedside table, instead it’s a copy of Lost Horizon by James Hilton and there is a pair of binoculars on the desk so you can zoom in on the view. Something woke me up just before 4 o’clock which was fortunate as a mist was rolling in from the east and along the Thames. I was hoping it would thicken up with just the tops of the city skyscraper sticking out, but it dissipated instead. I had hoped for a decent sunrise but the cloud and mist were still about. Will I go back again. Yes, when I turn 70.

Exterior looking photos were taken through several layers of toughened glass that could do with cleaning, hand held with a Sony A7s with a Sony E16-35mm f4 ZA OSS T* wide angle lens attached.

Brian