> SlowTrav > UK > Vacation Rentals > Reviews > London

Review 3517: Allen House, Apartment

www.allenhouse.co.uk

Recommended. Review by Will Code For Fun from CA

apartments in Kensington, London

When

February 2008, 1 week

Location

Belatedly, here's our review of Allen House, in Kensington, London, where we stayed for a week in February 2008. Overall our experience was great. They belong to a time-share agreement, so some of their guests are transferring time-share credit from other countries; we didn't have any trouble reserving our one-bedroom apartment for a week in February, even though the reservation was made only about six weeks out.

Location:

convenient to the tube (High St Kensington stop about three blocks away) and tons of grocery shopping. (Google maps makes it look like a substantial walk to the tube, but it really wasn't difficult -- maybe half a mile.)
Quiet at night. Great safe neighborhood near anything you could need in terms of grocery shopping - big Whole Foods about five blocks away, Marks & Spencer at the tube station, Tesco two blocks away, Waitrose about a block away. Post office a block away. ATMs were close at hand, as were several Boots pharmacies.

Nearby Amenities

Definitely walkable to just about any amenity, all a short distance away on High Street.

The House/Apartment

Rather stately brick building with a lot of apartment units, many of which were bigger than one bedroom, though we didn't see any of the larger ones.

Garden

There was an outside area which we never actually entered. I think there were a few chairs out there under the trees. It wasn't overly warm, being February, so we didn't fancy sitting outside.

Furnishings/Cleanliness/Living Areas

We liked the decor, though nobody would call it gorgeous -- sturdy and nice quality furnishings, nothing super-deluxe, but good condition and a very home-like feeling. We each had one day of feeling unwell during our stay there, and were so so glad to have a cozy place to recuperate in.
Our one bedroom apartment had a living/dining room, a large kitchen, and a bedroom -- felt amazingly spacious!
Dining room has a table with four chairs, sofa and two armchairs, so you could definitely have people over for dinner.
Kitchen table with two chairs.
Maid service Monday through Friday is included in the rental. They'll do your dishes for an extra fee, if you want -- we didn't use that service, but everything was really kept very sparkling clean.

Bedrooms/Bathrooms

The king-size bed was actually two twin beds pushed together, but the seam wasn't too noticeable. We did sleep well on it anyway.

The "shower booster" extra heater meant we never ran out of hot water, even after long showers. Towels were nice, and there were plenty. The bathroom was pleasant and had plenty of space (on a little shelf-cabinet) for all our many toiletries.

Kitchen

There were great appliances. Good size fridge and freezer. A dishwasher! And a washing machine! (Not every unit may have either or both of these, apparently.)

Nice kitchen furnishings and dishes/cutlery. Plenty of towels. Good hot water supply. The kitchen was best equipped for breakfast - dinner was a little hard to cook (no large pots).

Oven, stove, microwave all worked well.

Problems or Bonuses

Negatives we found (and there really weren't very many):

Doorstops were old and hard to use, and all the doors in the apartment fall shut without them.
Kitchen window of a ground floor apartment didn't lock, which made us nervous from a safety point of view.
Although there's a cool videophone for the front door, the feature allowing us to be heard by the person outside didn't work.
We were charged £12 for making a few local calls - beware, you might want to find another solution for making your local calls.
Really expensive for us, though it felt worth it. We spent more on a week at Allen House than we do for a month's rent on our apartment.
We thought that the High St Kensington tube stop being on both the Circle and District lines would be really helpful for transportation, but the District line didn't seem to run very often (and had many branch lines, so when it did come, it usually wasn't our train), so it was like having only one tube line.
This isn't really a negative, just a tip: you have to flip the on/off switches for each outlet in order to use them. So don't despair if you think the outlet isn't working.

Positives:

We loved it overall. It was roomy and comfy.
We stayed in mid-February and we were warm and comfortable in the apartment the entire time. There were a lot of big windows, so it would probably be cool enough during the summer, too.
The fact that it was staffed during the day was a plus for us, since we were worried about renting from an agency and having the representative not show up on time to let us in.
Their website doesn't adequately convey how nice it is, especially on the outside.

Agency and Representatives (and price)

One on site staff person was a little chilly and officious, though the other two were super friendly and sweet. When we first called to make the reservation, they were really sweet, and it was a very pleasant and smooth experience. They didn't require any deposit before our arrival (although they did charge us for our full stay on our second day there).

As a postscript, in case it's helpful for anyone, here's a little summary of all the struggling we went through before picking Allen House. Some Slow Travelers here might remember my starting many threads while doing this London rental search -- we had a nightmare time trying to find something that fit all our criteria (big bed, comfortable, near a tube stop, FULL KITCHEN facilities including oven and freezer, not necessarily fancy but reliable). We appreciated all the help we got here so much, because we were very nervous about making our first international vacation rental. We were really scared by mixed reviews of rental agencies like A Place Like Home and all the many others, and everything was so expensive. We were lured at first by many positive online reviews of Coach House Rentals in London and then started to feel weird about how formulaic they all sounded, and got confirmation that the owner posts on sites himself pretending to be a renter (he actually made a post on Trip Advisor demonstrating it, identifying himself under a login he had previously used to recommend his own service). So we decided not to use them -- we were just too uncomfortable about it, but that was a big disappointment because there wasn't much else for reasonable prices. Then we settled with a sigh of relief on Kensington Court apartments, with whom we then had a yucky experience -- the manager actually fired us as guests (for complaining to them about their website listing a room that they almost never actually rent separately). What a relief it was to finally find a place that we felt confident about -- maybe we just were too picky, but it seemed very very hard, much harder than our housing search in Paris for the week before.

Do you recommend this vacation rental to others?

Allen House was enormously more expensive than our original budget. We couldn't find an actual Slow Travel review of it, but saw many other positive reviews from various sources, including some from Trip Advisor users with high post counts. We decided to splurge on it, and ended up feeling glad we did. We'd recommend it very strongly and would like to return ... though it'll take us a long time to save up for it!

Things to do in this area

Walking distance to Hyde Park and Kensington Palace, which made for some nice impromptu strolls.

This review is the opinion of a Slow Travel member and not of slowtrav.com.

Return to Reviews List

Car Rental	Hotel Booking	Flight Booking	Train Tickets	Books, Maps, Events
Europe Cell Phones	Long Distance Cards	Luggage, etc.	Travel Insurance	Classifieds

* Advertise on Slow Travel | Post your travel questions on the Slow Travel Forums