The Home Exchanger

London Hospitality Exchange - How Much Did We Save?

We had a wonderful time on our hospitality exchange.  I always like to tally up how much we saved on hotels after an exchange.  We stayed in London, one of the most expensive cities in the world, for 6 nights for free. 

An average hotel room in London costs about $150 a night.  So on hotel costs we saved about $900. The room we stayed in had its own ensuite bathroom and was very nice, pretty equivalent to a nice hotel room in a lot of ways.

In addition to the cost savings, it was nice to get to know Between the Commons, an area of London that we knew nothing about. We stayed less than one block off Northcote Rd, which was a vibrant street full of cafes, boutiques and gourmet food stores. Public transportation was very convenient - it took 5 minutes to get to Victoria Station in Central London. And we had lots of fun with our host.  Overall, we felt we were living how other Londoners live.

London Hospitality Exchange: Tate Modern Museum

Building on the trip to the Modernism exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum a few days earlier, I visited the Tate Modern yesterday. There were two exhibits focused on three 20th century artists. I was unimpressed with all three. And aside from two beautiful Picassos, a Monet and a room full of Rothkos, the permanent exhibition was also a disappointment. It's currently being rehung for the first time since the former power plant was first turned into a modern art mecca, which may explain the lackluster scene. The redone galleries will open in May. My favorite part was located on the edge of the permanent exhibit where a dark room full of doodads from the Freud museum were on display in boxes with description related to the content. Hard to describe but worth seeking out.

The real highlight of the excursion was walking across the Millennium Bridge. Despite the diagonal rain, it was a nice walk and the first time I was able to do it. When I lived in London a few years earlier, the bridge --referred to at the time as the Wobbly Bridge-- was closed because it shook so much. Even in the wind yesterday, it held steady.

London Hospitality Exchange: Dinner and Theater

We saw Kathleen Turner on stage last night in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The entire cast was wonderful in the disturbing play. Theater is one of the best things about London. There is a play or musical for everyone and you can take in even more of it when you do a home exchange.  At 95 pounds for two dress circle tickets, it wasn't cheap, but well worth it.

Another worthwhile indulgence was pre-theater dinner at J. Sheekey. The sister restaurant of The Ivy, this seafood restaurant is located 10 minutes from Shaftesbury Avenue and offered fantastic service and food. In the wood panelled room, I had a fish pie while Jessica enjoyed a deboned Dover sole. The creme brulee dessert topped it off and set us off see Ms. Turner in a good mood.

London Hospitality Exchange: Dinner with our Host

We took our hospitality exchange host out to dinner last night to Yauatcha, a hip dim sum joint in the heart of Soho. Rated 25 for food in Zagat and owned by Hakkasan creator Alan Yau, Yauatch didn't dissapoint. We were a little dissapointed that the wine was brought out warm, but the creative and tasty food more than made up for it. The best dishes were the crispy duck and the salt and pepper squid. No one had the guts to try the chicken feet, which left more for me.

And despite my trepidation about ordering dessert in a Chinese restaurant -- I'm not a big red bean fan-- Yauatcha is no normal Chinese restaurant. An incredible French patisserie and tea shop operates out of the top floor, where the pastries look more like museum pieces than food items. The highlight was a coconut chocolate crumble that blew everyone away. If you're interested in more traditional fare while in London, you should still stop in at Yauatcha for a cup of tea and one of the delectable pastries pictured above.

London Hospitality Exchange: English Football Game

When traveling in a foreign country, one of the best ways to get an authentic taste of life there is to attend a local sporting event. It's a good opportunity to see the locals at their most passionate. England is no exception when it comes to their football, or soccer as Americans call it. I was fortunate enough to have a friend who was able to obtain two tickets to one of the most significant games of the English season this year.

Arsenal, the fifth place team, was hosting Tottenham, the fourth place team located down the road. The venue was Highbury, Arsenal's legendary stadium slated for replacement in 15 days. It was an unusually warm afternoon. The Arsenal fans, used to championship seasons in recent years, were quiet and frustrated most of the match while the Tottenham fans, which made up only a small portion of the fans in the stadium, were loud and frenzied throughout. The spectacle is unlike anything at an American sporting events.

The game ended in a draw after a controversial goal by Tottehanham's Robbie Keane and a beautiful goal by Thierry Henry. I fell in love with English soccer after living in England for a few years. But, it's possible to gain an interest in a new sport after a single visit. At the very least, you should gain some new insight into the local culture.

London Hospitality Exchange: Spend Saved Hotel Money on Restaurants

There are a lot of great things about home exchanging, and saving money is definitely one of them. In certain destinations, this has distinct advantages since you can spend that saved money on wonderful restaurants. We took that advice and had a tasty dinner at Club Gascon, a French restaurant in London's Clerkenwell neighborhood. Best known for its foie goie and Sauternes, it's one of our favorite restaurants in the British capital. Stockard Channing, of Grease and West Wing fame, was seated at the table next to ours. Afterward, we popped right around the corner and looked at the old church where one of the weddings in Four Weddings and a Funeral was filmed. We returned to the tube by walking through the Smithfields market, where the picture to the right was taken.

London Hospitality Exchange: V&A's Modernism Exhibit

We're in London on a hospitality exchange before we depart next week for the Intervac annual general meeting in Rhodes. The first thing we did upon arriving at Heathrow was to pick up a copy of Time Out, London's weekly entertainment guide. After looking through the magazine, we decided that the first museum we wanted to visit was the Victoria & Albert, which was putting on an exhibit of modernism. It was a fun and exciting history of the 1920s and 30s. For a full review of the exhibit, click here.