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Times
06-05-2025
- Times
22 of the best affordable hotels in London under £200
London might be one of the most expensive cities in the world, but there's no need to blow your entire travel budget on a hotel. Forget tatty rooms and shabby surroundings: in recent years, a wave of smart openings across the capital has tapped into the growing realisation that good value shouldn't mean compromising on excellent design. Increasingly, destination restaurants and buzzy, neighbourhood bars (quite rightly) come as standard too. Want to hang out with the creative set in Shoreditch or in the cultural hub of the South Bank; at a sweet, up-and-coming spot in the suburbs or slap bang in the centre of the city? There are plenty of places that won't scrimp on service or style, or dip too heavily into your holiday spending pot. Here are the best affordable places to stay in London, all offering room-only doubles at under £200 a night. This article contains affiliate links, which may earn us revenue Best for a spot of shopping Forget Oxford Street: the newest Hoxton hotel is right by Westfield shopping centre for a spot of retail therapy. A 20-minute stroll takes you to Holland Park (and Notting Hill is one Tube stop further on). You'll want to head back to the hotel for dinner at the Thai-Americana restaurant, Chet's, where you can feast on firecracker lobster noodles or sea bream, coconut and lemongrass fish curry. Stylish rooms have peach-toned walls, scallop-edge headboards, terrazzo-topped bedside tables and copper finishes and eight categories range from Hideout (with no windows but a king-size bed) to Biggy, with a freestanding tub. • Discover our full guide to London Best for a great jumping off point The Australian-born hotel brand TRIBE landed in Canary Wharf in 2022, bringing a smart, wallet-friendly place to stay in the financial district. Brass lamps and funky cityscape artwork add character to the bedrooms while all-day dining happens at California-inspired Feels Like June (tuna steaks, cobb salad, chipotle half chicken), and there's a 24-hour grab-and-go counter for coffee and snacks. Best of all, though, is the buzzy outdoor terrace with canal views for sundowners. Hop on the Jubilee line west to Bermondsey for the Maltby Street food market held on weekends or take the DLR to Cutty Sark to stroll up One Tree Hill for panoramic views of the capital. Best for refinedvillage life The Thames setting — and the restaurant's wraparound balcony overlooking the water — are the biggest draws to this south London hotel and members' club. The executive chef Vanessa Marx (previously a guest judge on Celebrity MasterChef South Africa) emphasises wild, foraged and sustainable ingredients; oyster mushrooms grown from recycled coffee grounds and microgreens such as radishes and rainbow chard cultivated at Rooftop Farm Wimbledon. Rooms are pared-back and neutral with handmade beds and wooden floors; the best have copper baths. Drop into yoga classes, book a guided paddleboard session on the river or a massage in the new treatment room. Richmond Park is on the doorstep and glorious Kew Gardens is a 15-minute drive away. • Best Airbnbs in London Best for soul-soothing stays A calming antidote to the chaos of the outside world (and nearby Paddington station), this Scandi-style haven is centred on wellness — from the plant-centric menu at Kitchen restaurant, curated by the health brand Yeotown, to the noise-free library and wooden boxes in rooms that encourage guests to lock their phones away at night. Plus, there is a changing wellness programme that could include morning meditation, vinyasa yoga and guided runs in Hyde Park. It's a 20-minute walk to the independent boutiques on Marylebone High Street in one direction and Little Venice, where the Grand Union Canal and Regent's Canal meet, in another. • Best boutique hotels in London Best for home-from-home appeal A budget-friendly hotel in upmarket Belgravia? Incredibly, yes, at this long-established, boutique within walking distance of the neighbourhood's fancy delis and galleries, with Buckingham Palace and Sloane Square also nearby. The 26 rooms are split across a pair of Georgian townhouses with bold, feature wallpapers, Pooky lampshades and geometric cushions — downstairs you can tuck into brunch at the Buttery, where the likes of shakshuka and warm beetroot salads are served until 3.30pm, or while away sunny afternoons with a book and an Aperol spritz in the walled garden. • Best things to do in London Best for living like a local With the V&A and the Natural History Museum on the same road, this beautifully designed aparthotel couldn't be better placed for a weekend of culture. There's a mix of art deco and 1960s influences in the rich jewel-like colours and retro tassel lampshades in the rooms, studios and suites; the last come with a kitchen kitted out with a microwave and dishwasher if you want to tuck into a takeaway from restaurants such as Thali, an Indian institution on Old Brompton Road (it's a 15-minute walk or order on Deliveroo). There's also everything you might want on site, from a laundry and gym to a co-working space, garden and EVE, a coffee shop, bar and restaurant rolled into one. Best for smart, contemporary design Fresh from refurbishment at the end of last year, this hotel is a two-minute walk from magnificent St Paul's Cathedral, and less than ten minutes from the Thames. Its location also makes it the perfect place for long weekends, with Spitalfields Market, Brick Lane and Shoreditch just two Tube stops away. Mid-century pop art prints and fluted headboards give nods to the building's postwar heritage while handy touches such as self-check-in iPads save time and there's a co-working space in the Living room for relaxing with coffee or cocktails from the Counter. • Great things to do in London when it rains Best for entertainment valueYou can't miss the bright red lights of the Bedford — just a five-minute walk from Balham station — and you wouldn't want to either. This 15-room pub with boutique rooms charms you with its circus theme downstairs and wows you upstairs in the bedroom: expect bold wallpapers, Instagram-worthy tubs and loud but stylish interiors. A stay here will put you in very good company: the likes of Ed Sheeran, Paolo Nutini and KT Tunstall have all performed in the club room before they hit the big time. It's a hotbed for new comedy talent too, having hosted a young Harry Hill and Frank Skinner. There's always something happening in the five bars, be it a swing dance or an open mic night, and the buzzing pub guarantees a good time, a great meal (food is half-price on a Tuesday) and plenty of tempting cocktails. Best for smart technologyBrilliantly positioned just behind the South Bank and a few minutes' walk from London's renowned Borough Market, this is a smart hotel in both senses of the word. Everything from check-in to browsing menus for the canteen M bar is done on an app. All rooms are the same; compact but with all the necessities you need for a good night's sleep: coloured mood lighting, blackout blinds, king-size beds. There's a help-yourself breakfast and a stylish living room hangout space furnished with Vitra chairs, a curated collection of books, modern art and for a laid-back vibeA pub, restaurant and hotel rolled into one, the Culpeper is a stone's throw from buzzing Spitalfields Market and Liverpool Street. Expect virtually the same menu — comfort classics such as beer-battered fish and chips — in the light-filled pub and the smarter bistro on the first floor. Rooms are rustic-luxe, with wooden bedheads and wicker lights, tree-trunk tables and cosy throws on the beds. In the summer, the best spot for dinner and drinks is the rooftop, where produce for the kitchen is grown in the garden. Best for rooftop garden views Named in homage to the local 19th-century anti-slavery campaigner and social reformer Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, this characterful pub and hotel sits right on Brick Lane (it's the younger sibling to the Culpeper down the road). The 15 pared-back but functional rooms feature handwoven artworks, rugs and blankets (another nod to Buxton, who also raised money for the weaving community) and a selection of books chosen by the nearby bookshop Libreria. The ground-floor bar serves low-intervention wines, local beers and a bar menu of nibbles such as artichoke hearts, Ortiz sardines on toast and a Mons cheeseboard. There is also a guests-only rooftop garden, which delivers knockout views of the City. Read our full review of the Buxton Best for family weekendersThere's a loose sports theme to Moxy London Stratford — a reference to its location, a ten-minute walk from the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park — from the silhouettes of athletes swimming, skipping and playing table tennis, printed on wood panelling, to a light fitting designed to imitate gymnastic rings. There's also a mural by illustrator and street artist Alex Lucas depicting east London landmarks. Table football, books and board games (as well as the bar) encourage families to stay put, while the 24-hour grab-and-go is perfect for stocking up on provisions before heading out. Best for visiting museumsIt's the convenient location of the Rockwell in west London, close to blockbuster museums and boutique shopping in Chelsea, that makes it a winner. Inside the Victorian townhouse, the look is classic (rooms are furnished with floral wallpapers and oak furniture). Another boon is the walled garden, dotted with pretty plants and ideal for alfresco summer drinks, while the restaurant serves an all-day brunch menu that covers everything from soups and salads to fish and chips and steak. Best for creative typesA social enterprise hotel for the arts opposite Wood Green Tube station (it's just 12 minutes to King's Cross), Green Rooms has discounted rates for artists and creatives. Chairman Kurt Bredenbeck founded the Hoxton in Hackney and advised on the design here: expect original art deco period detailing complemented by a stripped-back, rustic aesthetic in the 24 rooms. Some have shared bathrooms, and there are also 12-bed and 14-bed dorms). The restaurant, Oita, specialises in Japanese food in a relaxed atmosphere. Best for seeing the sights The no-frills, function-first Z Hotel group has 11 outposts dotted around the capital but this one, in a red-brick house that backs onto St Paul's Church behind the Piazza in Covent Garden, stands out for its buzzing, brilliant location. Rooms are compact (some categories have no windows) but come with crisp linens and comfy beds. There's a café for a continental breakfast, toasties and pizza lunches, and wine in the for stylish breaksThis grade II listed Victorian pub with rooms is perfect for those who want a boudoir they'll remember. Forget plain walls and soulless furnishings; the decor here is a tasteful clash of bold wallpapers, velvet curtains and vintage furnishings. Downstairs there's a lively restaurant and well-stocked bar, while every spare wall is covered in a mix of quirky photographs and paintings. Food is a cut above standard pub grub and the Sunday roast is one of the best in London. Here on a summer evening? Tuck in on the terrace: it's perfect for warm evenings with an Aperol in hand. • Best dog-friendly hotels in London Best for an East End escapeHoused in a former textiles factory in Whitechapel, this New York-inspired hotel nods to its industrial past with exposed brick walls and huge metal-framed windows. Even the smallest rooms come with a king-size bed; the best loft room has its own hot tub on the roof. Social spaces include a games room with a pool table, a library and yoga studio, while the menu at Mr White's English Chophouse restaurant, which centres around halal steaks, grills and chops, is devised by the chef Marco Pierre White. Tower Bridge and the Tower of London are within walking for exploring south of the river This hotel, a ten-minute walk from London Bridge Tube station, provides a great base for those who want to explore the South Bank — the Tower of London and Borough Market are both a short stroll away. Rooms are comfortable and surprisingly spacious and the best come with excellent views of the Shard. There's plenty of choice at breakfast and the mood-lit bar is the perfect place to put your feet up after a day of walking around the city. Best for couples getawaysThe design-centric chain Mama Shelter's London outpost is in the heart of Shoreditch so there's no shortage of things to do nearby. But if you're thinking about staying put, the hotel has a busy restaurant and bar serving an eclectic menu ranging from fish and chips to peri peri chicken burger, plus some banging cocktails. Guests can also make use of the gym — and the hotel even has its own karaoke rooms. Bedrooms here are on the cosy side but they have everything you'd need, from a mini-fridge to a desk. A USP for the brand is that free movies are included as part of your stay, even X-rated ones. Best for sustainable stays If you want somewhere to stay with eco-friendly credentials, look no further than Room2. On the roof, there are solar panels as well as 75,000 bees creating local honey and contributing to biodiversity in the area. Inside, all energy comes from renewable sources and the showers use 40 per cent less power (with a promise that they don't scrimp on water pressure). Climate-friendly measures extend to the decor, with pieces made locally wherever possible and carpets created from fishing nets. There's a café serving breakfast and light bites — or you can make use of your room's handy kitchenette. Best for solo travellersThis hotel is housed in a slick, post-war office building, around a courtyard just off Fleet Street, once the home of some of Britain's best newspapers ‚— you'll be less than ten minutes' walk from St Paul's and only a little further from the theatres of Covent Garden. Rooms, decorated in greys and emerald greens, manage to feel both comfy and upmarket and bathrooms are kitted out with Antipodes products. Chambers restaurant, a nod to the courts nearby, serves hearty classics and steaks and spills out into a courtyard during for music loversThis hotel will hit the right note with music lovers. Formerly the Hard Rock Hotel, there's memorabilia everywhere and guests will find vinyl record players and black-and-white shots of big-name rock legends on the walls. Live music takes centre stage each evening — best enjoyed between 5pm and 7pm when the cocktail happy hour is in full flow — and hearty American favourites are dished up at the Sound Bar: sizzling fajitas, stacked burgers and sides of mac and cheese. You'll struggle to find somewhere more central too. The hotel is a few minutes' walk from Marble Arch tube station and Oxford Street is moments away. Additional reporting by Lucy Perrin, Alexandra Whiting and Qin Xie • Most romantic hotels in London• Best London hotels with a view
Chicago Tribune
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Cynthia Pelayo blends horror and Chicago history in ‘Vanishing Daughters' — including legend of Resurrection Mary
Cynthia Pelayo walked into a bar the other day just after it opened. It was a weekday. The place was dead. Other than a bartender and the dead girl in the corner — a mannequin, dressed like a ghoul, in a long white gown and pale make-up. Pelayo jumped and laughed. She wasn't here for a drink; she's been sober for several years. She was here because Chet's Melody Lounge in Justice is entwined with the legend of Resurrection Mary — that's Mary in the corner — and Pelayo just wrote a novel weaving together a serial killer, the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, a plane crash at O'Hare, quantum entanglement, Chet's and Resurrection Mary. Her thrillers, becoming increasingly popular, bite off a lot, but always include some uncanny paranormal something or other, and a nod to the history of tragedy in Chicago. Hailey Piper, a fellow bestseller and friend from Maryland, said she's heard critics complain about the amount of Chicago history in Pelayo's books. She heard people say they don't want a history lesson when they read a novel. 'And yet nobody complains when Stephen King goes on a 10-page tangent about Derry, Maine, and that's not even a real place! In horror, setting is very important, and in Cynthia's novels you get a real feel for Chicago, always with the reminder she's critiquing a place she loves so much.' Chet's, Pelayo reminded me as we entered, leaves a bloody mary on the bar every night, in honor of Mary. As the local lore goes, a taxi driver on Archer Avenue picked up a strange woman who, during the ride, seemed to vanish. The driver stopped at Chet's, to ask if anyone had seen the woman. The bar exploded in laughter. You just met Mary, they said. Pelayo, 44, long black hair, long face, head to toe in black, explained to the bartender we just stopped by to look around; she has a new book, 'Vanishing Daughters,' partly set on Archer Avenue and about Mary. The bartender said she'll have to read that one. Chet's owners emerged from the back. Richard Prusinski, whose father, Chet, bought the century-old bar in the 1960s, has run it for years with his wife, Barbara. They inherited the ghost tours that stop by and tourists looking for a fright. Halloween is their Christmas. Sometimes a customer will say they danced with Mary. The bartender, listening, said she's heard strange knocks 'but Mary's fine if you just leave her be.' Pelayo nodded: 'She's not mean. She's Chicago's ghost, we love her.' 'You from the area?' Barbara asked. 'West of Logan Square,' Pelayo said. 'Always interested in local ghosts?' 'Oh, yeah. The devil baby at Jane Addams Hull House. Of course, all the gangster-related ghosts. … This area takes a lot of pride in those kind of stories, you know?' Barbara stepped aside to reveal a backroom still decorated for St. Valentine's Day as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, complete with gangster cutouts and faux bullet holes. Outside, Archer Avenue is lonesome in the daylight, austere Resurrection Cemetery stretching along one side and depressed dusty parking lots and industrial-looking buildings lining the other side. Pelayo sent a lot of time around here while writing 'Vanishing Daughters,' just as she spent a lot of time on the Chicago River while writing 'Forgotten Sisters' (which draws on the S.S. Eastland ship disaster in 1915 that killed 844 passengers and crew) and walking around Humboldt Park lagoons while writing 'Children of Chicago' (partly about the history of local children killed by neighborhood violence). 'At night, there's nothing here,' she said, watching traffic hush past. 'It's like standing in nothing. There's a lot of versions of the Mary story, but generally, she met a man at the Willowbrook Ballroom, they danced all night, he went to take her home, she vanished and now hitchhikes on Archer. Everyone knows this. I knew it as a kid. I came here at night to see what people see and it's super dark, just nothing moving. What's interesting is supernatural activity spiked after the first nuclear reactors (assembled in Hyde Park) were buried in Red Gate Woods nearby. Now people see black horses with fiery eyes, monks high in the tree tops. I mean, the Illinois-Michigan Canal isn't far and some Irish immigrants who dug it out died then kind of slipped into the water and washed away …' She could go on. Her husband, Gerardo Pelayo, a senior IT analyst, said family trips sometimes get hijacked by his wife's appetite for tragic histories. The couple and their two kids tried to hike Red Gate: 'The first time we went, it was cold, kind of dark, rainy and we didn't even make it to the (reactor) site. Cynthia felt something and said, we have to go now.' Pelayo's horror novels do not read like a lot of horror novels. They are light on jump scares and blood. They read less like contemporary horror than Gothic thrillers relocated to a 21st-century Midwest, layering in detective fiction, melodrama, a touch of lyrical literary ennui. History in her books — the legacy of local violence, the Iroquois Theater fire, the early silent film studios — plays like a mirrored reflection of the present. She doesn't focus on monsters so much as their victims, ghouls with reasons. Becky Spratford, a local librarian and major tastemaker in the horror genre, said: 'Cynthia doesn't write the most violent horror out there but without question it's some of the most disquieting. If you live in Chicago, you feel these stories in your guts.' A Cynthia Pelayo novel also throws a fairy tale in there somewhere. 'Forgotten Sisters' drew from the Little Mermaid, 'Children of Chicago' had room for a Pied Piper luring children to their dooms. Her latest book finds some inspiration in Sleeping Beauty. She notes two reasons for this: As others have said, the flip side of Chicago's history of tragedies is its incongruous history as a birthplace of magic — the writing of 'Wizard of Oz,' the home of Walt Disney. Her parents, who came to Chicago from Puerto Rico and settled in Hermosa — where Pelayo and her family still reside — 'couldn't read English well, so they recounted fairy tales and lullabies, which became a place of comfort. I still feel like if I have a fairy tale for the scaffolding of a story I can tell it.' So far, it's worked. This will be a big year for Pelayo: Other than 'Vanishing Daughters,' two of her earlier novels from independent publishers — and her debut story collection, 'Lotería,' which she self-published in 2012 (after using it as her MFA thesis for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) — are being reissued soon by a major publisher, Hachette. 'Vanishing Daughters,' meanwhile, is published by Amazon imprint Thomas & Mercer. Jessica Tribble, Amazon's editorial director, told me: 'I'm a huge fan. I love how she finds a way to weave familiar tales into a modern story. She touches on Sleeping Beauty even as she asks what it means for Chicago to be a city with a history of serial killers. She is making fairy tales part of the zeitgeist — yet reminding us fairy tales were often cautionary for a reason.' We went across the street to Resurrection Cemetery. We checked in at the front office, so they knew why two people were casually using a cemetery parlor to talk. The woman at the counter said she never heard of Resurrection Mary, which sounded like something she tells tourists. 'Oh, Mary's not with us,' Pelayo explained. 'She's a ghost.' 'I haven't seen her,' the woman replied blankly. Thoroughly ghosted, we sat. She doesn't believe in ghosts, Pelayo told me. She's told others she doesn't believe in an afterlife, or a heaven or a hell. 'Children of Chicago,' which put her on the map, was her way of writing about growing up in Hermosa, at the poverty line, touched often by crime. As she started on 'Vanishing Daughters,' her father died of cancer. She was thinking of how to get across 'the way grief manifests emotionally and spiritually,' while also touching on the history of Chicago women whose murders have gone unsolved. She saw Mary as a vehicle. 'A lot of murdered people get victimized after their deaths. There are so many versions of a vanishing hitchhiker story, for instance, but usually they're malicious — they're monsters. What if Mary was a murder victim trapped in an existential loop, wandering Archer Avenue when all she wants is to get home?' Pelayo lived in Puerto Rico until she was 2. Her household was very strict, she said, her parents conservative Catholics who nevertheless relished casually retelling — 'so matter of factly' — stories of kidnapped cousins never seen again and childhood friends found dismembered in dumpsters. She said she wasn't allowed to have many friends, and was rarely allowed to leave the house. She remembers watching a lot of horror movies, and 'because I didn't go to preschool, my dad would take me on the train downtown and get popcorn and go to the Division Street bars so he could talk to his buddies while I played Pac-Man. He would just take me everywhere since he loved the history of Chicago, so I was constantly being shown it. I also remember someone called me a (racial epitaph) my first day at Columbia College. I told him I was never going back. He said he had police dogs attack him in the '60s. He had local coffee shops not serve him when they heard his accent — but I wasn't going back to school because someone called me one racist name? He was right and I went back and graduated with honors.' Gerardo was friends with his future wife in high school, though he remembers her as a teenager being intimidating, an authoritative ROTC member 'who let how she felt be known and didn't shrink from exchanging looks or words in hallways. She was always a target.' She was allergic to any kind of bureaucratic authority and was frequently suspended. She wanted to go to Columbia and become a fiction writer but her father ('who came to America with $6 in his pocket') would tell her, 'No, you should be like Ted Koppel.' So she settled on journalism, then went to Roosevelt University for marketing. She worked for two decades at Ipsos, doing marketing research in the corporate reputation division. She was good at it, she said, but she was never happy. She told her husband she was going back to school to get her MFA in fiction writing. 'I was surprised, yes,' he said. 'We had made it out of the inner city and now we were traveling and we had kids and we were running marathons and we had a cute dog — but Cynthia wasn't really fulfilled.' At SAIC, her advisors told her that she was a horror writer who didn't know it. She wrote poetry about true crime. She wrote books of poetry. Inspired by 'Devil in the White City,' she started 'Children of Chicago' as a blend of history, detective thriller and horror. At first, the mix was daunting: 'Nobody would represent me because the fiction and the history would be separate chapters. I would hear that I wrote like someone who didn't know how to write. So I started to learn how to spread out the nonfiction in the fiction.' She began to win awards, an International Latino Book Award, a Bram Stoker Award — the Oscars of horror writing. Yet, as her star rose, she said she experienced racism, classism, sexism — 'a lot of insinuation, a lot of it online, and from corners of the (horror) community, who seemed to think this stuff wasn't meant to be written by certain people.' She began to regret that, despite having broader aims, she was largely identified as a horror writer. Her agent, Lane Heymont of New York-based Tobias Literary Agency, said: 'She's one of the top women in horror right now, the first Latinx person to win a Bram Stoker, and authors are prone to being jealous. The more attention you get, the more people want to publicly feed on you in this business. But also, publishers used to think of horror as a white man's game — they knew Stephen King and that's about it. But horror is on the rise now, and those same people are having to get used to all the women and people of color with major roles in this genre.' Indeed, the most interesting new horror voices of the past decade — Victor LaValle, Stephen Graham Jones, Jessica Johns, Alma Katsu, Carmen Maria Machado, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Nick Medina, Gus Moreno — have been Indigenous, Latino or writers of color. As Pelayo and I talked, a young Latina in the cemetery office stopped to say hi. 'I love your books,' she told Pelayo. 'Thank you! I'm here because my new book — ' ''Vanishing Daughters'!' 'Right! It's set on Archer.' 'I'm so excited to read it.' When she left, Pelayo leaned over: 'I have to accept I am getting more public. I didn't realize that could happen. I told my husband we can't fight in public anymore. Scary! '
