AD | Includes gifted item
John’s birthday was a little over a week ago and I wanted to do something really special. Buy A Gift helped us out by sending us for an Overnight Family Break In London At A Novotel Hotel. We love going to London as a family as there is always so much for Erin to do and it means we get to spend some real quality time together. We have previously stayed at the Novotel London Blackfriars hotel and loved it so this time we wanted to stay somewhere different and chose to stay at the Waterloo branch instead.
The Buy A Gift voucher lets you choose from 4 different Novotel branches in London and to book you need to get in touch with the hotel itself and email through your reservation request. We got booked in really quickly and our choice of date was no problem at all. We needed to email over the Buy A Gift voucher code to secure our booking so I took photos and emailed them over and after that everything was booked in.
Novotel London Waterloo is really easy to get to and it was only a 10-15 minute walk from Lambeth North tube station. There are plenty of busses that stop just down the road from the hotel too so it’s easily accessible no matter where you are coming from.
On the day of our visit we’d had a busy morning travelling down to London and also going to London zoo so we didn’t actually get to check in until around 7:30pm. We were met by the friendliest receptionist who greeted us with a huge smile and made such a fuss of Erin. Novotel hotels seem to go above and beyond for children and this is why we were so impressed the last time we stayed in one. Erin was given a Minion bracelet, activity pack and 2 cuddly toy keyrings! The hotel didn’t need to do this for us and they didn’t know we were there to review through our Buy A Gift voucher. However, little extras and that special welcome really makes a massive difference to us and it’s one of the reasons why we wanted to go back.
As we checked in we were told we had been upgraded to one of the new executive rooms which had been fully refurbished. I love an upgrade so I was really excited to see our room. On first impressions I was both impressed and a bit worried at the same time. The room was beautiful but the sink for the bathroom was part of the main room and there was big glass doors to the shower and toilet. It was a bit strange to have part of the bathroom so open and Erin immediately wanted to explore it. As a family room, I don’t think this aspect worked quite so well but as an executive room, it was great!
John and had a huge king size bed set against a beautiful winter scene. The whole room had such a nice feel to it with the grey and white colour scheme with little pops of colour here and there. Our bed was insanely comfortable and it has now made me realise that maybe our mattress at home isn’t quite as good as I thought it was. If you are a heavy person and want to good quality mattress the visit abcluxury.co.uk. I usually have a hard time sleeping in hotels but that wasn’t the case here. I had such a good night’s sleep and woke up feeling really refreshed in the morning… even if it was 6am thanks to Erin!
We were a bit confused about where Erin was going to sleep. In the last Novotel we stayed in Erin’s sofa bed was already made up but here we were met with some fancy looking couch that we couldn’t figure out. Neither me or John could figure it out so we had to nip to reception to ask what to do but instead, they sent up someone to sort the bed out and put all the bedding on for Erin. The Novotel staff were really apologetic as they said this should have been done before we arrived. It wasn’t a huge deal though and Novotel sorted it out really quickly and we appreciated that.
Also in the room was a large desk area, television, tea and coffee making facilities (including Nespresso machine) and free water in the mini fridge. We also had slippers in the room as well which was a really nice touch. There was plenty of plug sockets dotted around the room as well as USB ports and an iPod docking station. This room really caters for technology users and if we’d been staying a bit longer, it would be been ideal for me to get some work done.
While this branch doesn’t have a swimming pool like Blackfriars but it does have a Hammam and sauna. As we were so busy we didn’t actually get to the hotel until around 7:30 and we were all exhausted. I knew we would be this busy in advance so I didn’t bother to take my swimming costume this time around. I would have loved to have spent some time in the sauna though but it’s great to know for the next time we want to stay.
Breakfast was included in our stay, which would normally cost £16.95 if you were to pay for it. If you take this price off the experience price of £149 it makes the room cost £115 which is really reasonable for the area, hotel and room that you get. Breakfast consisted of the usual hotel breakfast items such as sausages, bacon, eggs, cereals, pastries and breads. John and I both really enjoyed our breakfast and Erin was happy to have loads of different options.
We all thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Novotel London Waterloo and I’m a bit sad we didn’t get to stay longer. The Buy A Gift experience made booking our stay a breeze and it took all of the stress out of finding a hotel in London. I would happily buy this experience again, even for ourselves to use as it’s such a good deal.
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