Fifty years ago when I was in my dewy early twenties, I went to England for a couple of weeks. One day during my travels I found that I would need what in the US was termed a “wake up call”. Noticing that there was no phone in the hotel room to contact the desk manager, I made my way downstairs to speak to him about how to arrange said wake up call. The young and decidedly handsome young desk clerk said in a beautiful British accent, “No problem. I’ll come by in the morning and knock you up”. I was more than a little bit stunned when I heard this and all I could think to say was, “I don’t think my mother would like that.” He looked quite puzzled and replied, “What do you mean? I’m just gonna come knock at your door at the time you requested.” After a sigh of relief, I informed him that the phrase had quite a different meaning in America.
In the days of the Industrial Revolution in the UK in a time before homes had power or even windup clocks, there was a person called a Knocker Upper who would walk the streets with a long pole to knock on peoples windows to wake them for work in the factories. This was taught in history lessons at school but I was too scarred of Mr Hughes the history teacher to ask who Knocks Up the Knocker Upper.
Just to clarify - you often will see "G" for ground floor here in the U.S., but the next floor up will be "2." You also might see "L" for "Lobby" in place of "G", or in addition to it if there happens to be a ground floor below the main reception area.
On the subject of elevators in the USA. If you see a star next to a number the star designates the floor in which the main entrance is located on. See time stamp 1:56 for an example.
My wife and I went to Ireland for our 1 year wedding anniversary, she specifically booked a hotel in Dublin that stated it had air conditioning because she likes to sleep in an icebox. When we checked in and noticed the room didn’t have the typical air conditioner system you see in US hotels, we asked the reception staff if this was a mistake, and they said the air conditioning that was advertised was that the windows could be opened. Luckily this wasn’t an issue with our stay as it remained relatively comfortable the whole time. It was definitely one of those small experiences that made the trip memorable.
Now that's beyond the pale and dishonest. Hotels in Europe know well what an AC is even if it's a window one or weaker than in the US. So glad you enjoyed your stay for such an important occasion and not caught in a miserable heat wave as it could and has ruined ruined friends experiences in non air conditioned hotels. They picked the hotel w/o AC, though. Oftentimes it was in the 80s. Ireland is cooler than the UK though, but getting hotter d/t climate change like most places.
@@stormythelowcountrykitty7147 Agreed. You were lied to. When I booked my hotel in a smallish town in Ireland, I exchanged emails that were very specific about air conditioning in the rooms. (I was there in July...so....) I was glad to feel cool air in the lobby area and in my room!
Keeping your power adapters for overseas travel in your empty carry-on makes a handy reminder when you go to pack for a trip. Saves hunting all over the house for an item used only when traveling.
Yes, and beware the adapter plugs…they can fry things out…don’t cheap out on them. I really wish there was a universal plug size/voltage…would make things simpler, but probably pretty complicated to do at this point.
Those travel adaptors fail to work fairly often . If it is just for charging a phone, just buy a charger plug in the country, the EU and much of Asia uses the same plug. Northern Europe hotels often have "double beds" that are two twin beds pushed together. I asm a snuggler; at best I end up sleeping in the crack or have ended up on the floor when the beds split apart. They usually have twin size sheets and blankets too. Most US hotels have carpet; which sucks if someone has allergies or previous occupant has smoked in the room, frankly I just find carpete in hotel rooms icky. In Asia many hotels give you toothbrushes and tooth paste. In love hotels they provide aftershave and lotion too. 🤐🤤😎 In the 90's Korean love hotels had free VCR tapes to use; for an extra the ones behind the desk could be used too. (Porn was illegal but available).
Oh yeah! [give myself a dope slap to the forehead], I remember that commercial. Thankfully someone posted it on youtube, I just watched it for nostalgia sake.
As an American, on my first visit to England, I was stunned by the tiny hotel rooms! I even tried quite an expensive hotel and the room was still very small 😢
Me as well, a bit. Very old hotels in some old East Coast cities (few that there are now--sadly in the last decade or so they are being replaced w modern ones) can have small rooms compared to modern ones. After all, places like Boston are literally 400 years old so have old buildings that can be charming and eclectic somewhat like in Europe/the UK. They are usually furnished with older (but not worn-more like charming) furniture and decor. They (were) lovely. When I travel alone I strongly prefer these. They have double beds, which is fine for me when alone.
I think they've gotten bigger over the years. I stayed in Manhattan once, and the room barely fit the bed. I also stayed at the Watergate a few years ago, and while bigger than the one I was at in NYC, it was still pretty small compared to a newer place.
Ice machines tend to be typical in the US, but not in the UK. Or perhaps other places too, I haven't traveled a lot. The first hotel I stayed at in London, the woman at the front desk told me I could get ice at the pub in the hotel when I asked where the ice machine was. I could hear her tell the woman she was training that Americans often ask for ice machines :) The last 2 hotels on that trip (out of 4) had an ice machine. I did a little happy dance in my hotel room to Ice, Ice Baby. It wasn't even so much that I wanted ice in my water, but if you don't have a fridge you can make a substitute refrigerator out of the ice bucket.
I remember traveling to NYC in about 1992 and staying in a hotel that had an actual elevator operator and the little "cage" door! That hotel did not have an ice machine. When I rang the front desk to ask about an ice machine, they offered to bring me a bucket of ice. I tipped the man $1.
Hallways in lots of British hotels (esp the older ones) make a really fun maze! "To find your room, go just down this hall until the first left. Then go straight until the hall turns left & right. Then turn right. Your room will be the second one after the hall turned left again."
Lawrence, in the US, we use First Floor and Ground Floor interchangeably. If you told people you're going to the ground floor of any building in the US, they won't look at you strange. The only thing confusing the Brits with the rest of the world is that they're separate floors in Britain. Why? I don't know.
Not only in Britain. In most of the world ground floor is zero and the first floor is above it. You need to go upstairs to get to room 101. That's at least the case in all of Europe and the Middle East. That doesn't only applies to hotel but to any building. I was shocked when I moved to the US and noticed the missing zero.
Ground floor : My next-door neighbour, who is 96, told me that when she was a girl she visited a nearby house where the floor of the hall and living room were actually made of compacted soil. Literally the ground floor. Most houses were like that in the middle ages, so the first lot of floorboards were above your head when you went in.
When I was in Birmingham a couple years back, I kept going down to the 1st floor and getting out, only to realize I was not at ground level. I did it more times that I care to admit because it was an embarrassing amount of times
Have never been to the UK, but I've noticed some differences when reading a book by an author across the pond in regards to rooms in hotels/homes and often had to reach for a dictionary at times only to find out they are what i thought they were. However, I've been learning a lot just watching this channel about those differences. Thank you, Laurance!!!
We stayed in a hotel in Florida and had 2 King-size beds, a coffee maker, fridge with a small freezer and a safe. We also had an arcade and 2 swimming pools and a restaurant attached to the hotel.
The hotel I work at has both a lobby and a foyer. The foyer being a super tiny room you first enter when coming in through the front door. Then another door that opens into the lobby. Helps keep the heat/cold from outside from getting in.
Your video section on the bath had my boyfriend and I dying laughing, especially me! I'm American and visiting my English boyfriend for the first time in England. I'm also a major klutz. His bath tub is very tall and also not equal to the floor... I'm also a short 4'11"/150cm. Getting in was a challenge in itself, but then when I got out I forgot about the height difference and ended up on the floor. My head fortunately was a few inches from the door and I can say I definitely scared him! I quickly got up and let him know I wasn't dead. Lol
We were recently in England, Wales, and Scotland. The differences I noticed in the hotels (compared to those in the US) were: the windows in the hotels could be opened, they didn't provide washcloths but the towels were huge, when we went down for breakfast they would ask our room number and then check off a list and sometimes even took us to our table, and our room had a single bed plus a queen-size bed. It's possible that the latter is available in the US but I've never seen it. Usually you either have 1 king, 1 queen, or 2 queens. Sometimes there's a foldout couch.
The lack of washcloths threw me for a loop. I'd always taken them for granted, and not one of my tourist survival guides thought to mention the BYOW situation.
At my height (6'4") the raised bathtub made standing up a bit difficult. No outlets in the bathroom, or shaver only. Also you often need to put you room card in a receptacle just inside to door to get the lights to come on.
@@pacmanc8103 It seems to be something that is less of a problem now as so many people need to leave items on charge when they are out of the room and taking the keycard out turns off the wall sockets. Also any credit card sized card will normally will work in the keycard switch, even a piece of folded paper.
I remember staying in London back in the late 90s and the British hotel did not furnish wash cloths. The front desk said that it was a personal item. Also, no shower curtain in my tub....had to strategically shower with a shower head in a old-fashioned legged tub without spraying the entire bathroom area. Very challenging.
I used a hand towel as my “flannel” as they call a wash cloth there. Wouldn’t toilet paper also be considered a personal item? And to think that I’m Japan you are provided with pajamas and slippers!
@@johnp139 but in Japan are the hotels heated? I've heard from a one year visitor that all public buildings offices, schools even some Apartment buildings all heat is absolutely turned off at 5pm. Close of business and on weekends?
Additional observations: Some of the London hotels I've stayed in didn't have operable windows (there was one, but it was painted over and according to the building map would have opened into an airshaft). The bathtub faucet was a giant dial with no instructions on how it worked so I had to call down to the desk for assistance on that one... many small places have no elevator at all, just narrow staircases. The plugs have switches next to them that you have to flip or else the plug won't work. Daily housekeeping is not a given. People who are the least bit claustrophobic really need to do their homework before selecting a hotel in the UK.
Amost no Amercan hotels have operable windows usually because the rooms are air condition and supposedly have no need for ventilation... but also to reduce the number of suicides, which interfere with business.
if you like claustrophobic in a hotel you should try hotels in Amsterdam. When I went to sit down in the bathroom I hit my head on the closed door. The surprise made me laugh but it was unexpected. you don't do it twice.
I learned about the ability to shut off the electricity to the room altogether when I visited Kenya; there is quite a strong British influence there, still. And in the US, for the past few years, there is now NO automatic daily housekeeping services... which I LOVE. Yes, they need to make a living too, but as I get older, discovering that some stranger came into my room, unescorted, and put his/her hands all over my stuff gives me the creeps to infinity. Don't touch my stuff.
Daily housekeeping was certainly a given before the pandemic, unless you were staying at some of the really bottom end hotels. I’m hoping it will come back on the road to normality but there’s no certainty that it will.
My dad is the "DO NOT TOUCH THE THERMOSTAT!" kind of person because of you know...bills. But when he gets into a hotel in the summer he turns that thing as low as possible.
I hate this about people. Especially my husband. I run my AC for comfort, wherever I am. One problem with setting a hotel AC lower than you are comfortable is that nowadays, the more 'modern' ones will turn on the actual HEATER if you simply turn the thermostat up 1 measly degree!!!
As a retired hotelier, the term bellhop is an antiquated term. We commonly use porter now. We do call the area between two sets of entrance/exit doors a foyer. The reason for two sets of doors is to help keep the temperature in lobby from being effected by the outside weather.
As a non-hospitality-industry American, I can confirm bellhop or bellboy are words I've never used and make me think of old movies. However, I've never really used "porter" in the hotel context either as it generally makes me think of the similar role on a train or ship rather than a hotel. I suppose I've always just said something like "hotel staff."
@@jameswoodard4304 interesting. But what do you call the bellhop/porter specifically? Like, when you are specifically wanting to talk about that position as opposed to all hotel staff, what do you say? I'm American and I always bellhop/bellman/bellboy.
@@ekaski1 , I honestly don't think it's ever come up. For example, if I were at a hotel and I wanted help with some bags, I would call the front desk and say, "Yes, I'm in Room XYZ. Could you send someone up for our bags, please." I've never really needed to use that specific job title in conversation, at least not as far as I can recall.
@@jameswoodard4304 ah ok, I see, that makes sense. I have a lot of young people in my life, so I have often had to teach people proper etiquette, particularly regarding tipping, for bellhops, valets, concierges, housekeeping, etc.
I've only had to explain floor numbering a couple of times in the hotel in which I work, G is often substituted for O. Big hotels near Heathrow or in London may have more first time American tourists to Britain that a 'small' 95 bed hotel in northern Scotland Explain that 3* hotels even for the well known brand hotel I work, don't have a restaurant (after breakfast), room-service or 24 hour housekeeping is more common. We do find ourselves using some American / international terminology just to make things a bit easier to understand.
Floor 0? Is the entrance to every British hotel in the Twilight Zone? So, a military man entering a British hotel at midnight finds himself standing in 0 level at 0000? He exists in neither space nor time.🤯 Honestly, I think the numbering difference may be related to other differing terminology. "Story" has a bit more of an implication of being off the ground, while "floor" pretty much *has* to include the literal ground. So where "floor" has been more common, the ground level is included, but where "story" has been more common and for a longer period, the ground level has not been counted as a "story." This is 100% a guess, so don't attack me when you find out it's complete nonsense.
The term 'valet' is used in the UK but it refers to a person who is a professional car cleaner who does both inside and outside of your car. So valet service here wouldn't park your car, they'd take it away and clean it.
Take it away? In the U.S., car wash services come to your house or workplace and wash your car in your driveway or parking lot, right where you parked it. Though where I live, most people take their cars to a car wash, if they don't wash it themselves in their driveway.
One of my favorite things about hotels in the UK and Ireland is having an electric teapot in your room. In one hotel in Coventry the radiator wasn't working and so I went to the front desk and informed them about this and they said they would send someone around with an electric heater. After about an hour one of the staff members turned up the promised heater which gave me visions of not shivering the rest of the evening. But such was not to be as the flaming thing didn't work. I visited the front desk again and was told the electric heater I was given was the only one in the hotel. So in order to get some heat in the room I filled up the tea pot and used it to boil water which slightly raised the temperature in the room. The next day I checked out early moved to a hotel closer to the city center where oddly enough their radiators worked.
I ran into a lack of air conditioning staying at a Toronto hotel in the summer. I complained to the management it wasn't getting cold enough and they said they'd look at it and never did. Also there was no sort of device to absorb the impact of doors closing so everytime anyone closed their door it sounded like a cannon blast. Also Archer teaches us he's a valet like mallet when he's your manservant and valet like ballet when he's parking your car.
one thing I have encountered in London and other parts is that the electrical outlets are sometimes controlled by an on and off switch or button. I remember staying in a hotel and tried to use the electrical outlet and for some reason it wouldn't work. Called down to the front desk and was told to try the switch on the wall. Which I assume was a light switch, but instead was the on/off for the power receptacle. many of the hotels in the UK are converted rooms from mansions (at least I think) and these usually have no lift at all.
I remember arriving late at night, very tired, at a hostel in Australia. I didn't turn the lights on because I didn't want to wake the other people in the room, so I just got ready for bed by the light of my cell phone, then plugged the phone up to charge and went to bed. When I woke up I went to get the phone, since I had plans for that morning and needed to use the navigation app to know how to get there, only to find a dead phone plugged into a power outlet that was turned off. My first thought of the day, "Crap! They do it here too!!" I heard recently that it's because of the voltage difference. That sounds reasonable, since other countries have higher voltage it's safer to have the current turned off while unplugging things.
All plug sockets have on off switches, our plug sockets are a much higher voltage than the US but yet are much safer due to the third prong having to "open" the plug socket and the on off switch.
I have a different view on bath tubs in at least one London hotel that I stayed at. The tub was large and comfortable and being use to showers I found the soak very relaxing. I asked my significant other if she thought it would fit in the luggage because I really wanted to take it home with me including the heated towel rods.
Perhaps you could have asked the hotel staff to saw it into luggage-size pieces for you. However, you still would not meet the airline weight allowance.
I worked for a while as a desk clerk in a small hotel in Arkansas. For reasons beyond the scope of this comment, we had a lot of Swedish travelers. One thing they almost always commented on was that they had never seen a hotel where the rooms open to the outdoors rather than to the interior of the hotel. At least in Arkansas, either option would be about as common.
To be honest, that is pretty weird to me. For a hotel or house (how could you even attach a screen door, if you wanted?) - but not a store, where it is common to pull open one door and push the other if they aren’t automatic. Outward-opening doors seem as though they could be dangerous, too. Are you sure they are equally common in Arkansas?!
@@pacmanc8103 I think you are misunderstanding - it's not that the doors swing outward, but that you step out of your hotel room and are no longer in the hotel. You don't need to pass through the lobby to get to your room.
I've stayed in only one hotel in Britain, in London, and yeah, the room was pretty small. It was air-conditioned, though. The only thing that caught me by surprise was a scale in the workout room. It gave me my weight as 12 stone and some pounds. I'd never heard of a stone as a unit of weight.
Not willing to read over 900 comments below to see if anyone has mentioned this already - but one thing I noticed in my UK vs. US travels is that American hotels provide bath towels, hand towels and face-cloths, whereas I have never been provided with a face-cloth in the UK. Someone told me that this sized linen would be considered a personal item, like a handkerchief and if one wanted one, they would bring it with them while travelling.
And I do -- even in the US. I bring my own face cloths so that I can remove makeup and get the towel as dirty as I care to without feeling bad for messing up a nice, white hotel towel.
My favorite hotel in Britain was in cheltenham. It was called The Queens Hotel now, but when it was first built and christened, it was called The Kings Hotel. Well… the King died so, what to do? Change the name. This is so unlike what we would do in the US that I’ve never forgotten it. Plus the hotel was charming. As was the staff. And the tea.
The hotels in New York are closer to European hotels when it comes to the size of the room. There is also a huge difference between a hotel which is often upscale, while a motel (or motor-inn) is more down scale as just a place to stay overnight during a long road trip. In fact the word motel comes from combining the words hotel and motor.
This. In US/Canada, you get a ice bucket and go fill it up at the ice machine, often on your floor by the elevator/lift. In London, I had to go down to the hotel bar, off the reception foyer and ask for ice. I was given a glass with 3 cubes. Told the guy to stop being tight, its just water. Said the ice freezer was a 5 minute walk away, so just gave me all the ice he had. A half-pint mug of ice.
@@Britishdave09 yeah.. there are a lot of brits who work in hotels wondering what it is the americans are doing with all that ice.. i've never understood the obsession with having 2 pint holders for ice. you used to have to pus ice machines in some braned hotels, but it's been stopped now as they are noisy, messy, and hardly ever used (except by americans) and are a bit of a hygene / food safety nightmare as they are used so rarely.
I am 6'3" and travel to Britain quite a bit. I have never stayed in any hotels there that actually have a shower door or a shower curtain. I always feel bad for the housekeepers because the water bounces off of me and right on the bathroom floor. I don't get it. Why no shower door or even a curtain? There is a small glass section near the bottom that does nothing.
On our only visit to Britain, we did notice the distinct lack of air conditioning (A/C) in many hotel rooms. Being from the southern U.S. we have grown accustomed to having A/C. We also noticed the climate was so mild , relatively, that we easily coped with the lack.
I went to Britain back in the 90’s. When me and my brother checked into the hotel we were shocked on how small it was. I would say it was about 10’x15’. Once you add the two standard size beds, it left just enough room for you to walk. The choice was simple, either sit on one of the beds or go to the bathroom.
My experience with staying in hotels in Britain is 50+ years old now, but I distinctly remember staying in a small hotel Easter weekend once. It was after April 1, and the heat had been turned off for the year. And it was freezing cold! I remember lying in one place in my bed all night, wrapped in my mother's thick winter coat, just to stay warm. Was this a common thing, is it one now? To turn the heat off so uncompromisingly that the guests are left to freeze, lol? It obviously made a strong impression on my 10 year old mind.
Spent the night with a friend in England. His mom worked at RAF Upper Heyford but lived in a nearby village. Remember sleeping (winter) in a bed that had no heat .. but the bed had about 10 comforters.
We had a similar experience in England. It was in May & it got down in 40s F at night & it was cold in our hotel room. My granny complained to receptionist only to be told that it was quite warm, really.
Hotels in the north of Scotland in March/April are often very very damp and freezing. In a smaller town the proprietor will have straw/hay on his clothing from feeding the sheep. You will never get the musty smell out of your clothes. Be prepared to spend the big bucks on a posh place but even then chances are the heating pipes will be banging all night. Last time over I rented a house but the smell still :(
I went in late winter when the heat should have been on and it was freezing almost everywhere. A couple places I had to wear my winter coat to bed and still shivered the whole night. One place right on a busy street had the radiator under the window but with thick floor-length drapes, so I had to choose between heat and privacy from leering drunks. If I ever go back, I'm just packing a down mummy bag.
I went in 1985 and stayed at a hotel called The Regent Palace in Picadilly Circus. I thought it was normal for there, but the rooms didn't have a bath and you had to use a common one at the end of the hall. I thought this was normal for over there.
Funny you should mention that hotel. Stayed there with friend in 1978 just after I finished college. None of the three of us had ever used a shared bathroom in a hotel before that wasn't en suite. Have to say having to "book" a bath was odd. We stayed in a big room with 3 single beds. I gather it's been torn down for some years now. The maid staff really earned their keep. The bathroom was immaculately cleaned.
The main building facade is still there as it is a listed building. Most of the old style mega hotels ( the RP had 1000+ rooms at one time) went out of business decades before.
First time I ever saw heated towel racks was on vacation in Britain. I've never seen them at hotels here, but I suppose there are American hotels that have them.
Those are very rare here - I think it’s because the room and attached bath is generally set at a certain temperature, so the bathroom isn’t chilly at all. Heated towel racks are pretty common all over Europe, I’ve found.
We had heated "towel racks" where we stayed in Mongolia. It was a Soviet-style apartment building. The plumbing was exposed, and the hot water pipes made great towel racks. We were also happy when the electricity was turned on; they needed to have planned rolling blackouts. I hope conditions are better there now, but I don't know if they are.
@@morganschiller2288If you’re buying them, you can get electric ones, or ones that are essentially central heating radiators, plumbed in to the circulating heating water.
Elevator markings in these United States varies greatly, I've notice. I've seen the ground floor marked with "1," "G," and "L"(for Lobby) in three different buildings on the same block. Adding to the confusion, some elevators mark the floor below the ground floor with a "B" for basement, "G" for garage, "S" for sub-basement, and I even saw one where it was marked -1 to denote what position to ground level you were going.
At my university they built a deep underground building and the elevator had floors 2 1 G -1 -2 -8 -9 -10 -11. The floors from -3 to -7 were unusable due to wetness in the cracked bedrock.
My late father was a bell hop at two hotels here in Fresno. He worked at the Californian and the Hotel Fresno. It's still hard to think about how long ago that was.
When I visited the UK in 2016, the biggest difference I found was that a large percentage of hotels do not have a lift/elevator. Of course, that could also be due to my habit of picking historic buildings/houses that could have been converted to a hotel from its original usage.
I was in London a few years ago and I made sure to get a hotel with a/c. My sister in law didn’t think that was necessary as Britain didn’t get hot but we were forever grateful for it when we experienced the HOTTEST DAY EVER in Britain during our stay (over 100 degrees f). The hotel, a Marriott, with one of their “top rooms” (thanks to my brother’s Marriott status when he booked it for us), was soooo tiny. Two queen size beds pushed together and about a foot of space around the beds. We didn’t complain. But it was an eye opener. I’d stay there again in a heartbeat.
Yeh many think it doesn’t get hot enough in the U.K for air con but i can certainly say during our summers it can get really hot. Even my cousin who came over from Australia in 2018 when we had a really good long summer was shocked at how warm it got.
When we vacationed in London we bought an adapter. First morning I used the adapter and my hair dryer I blew the fuse in the WHOLE hotel!! Our hotel did not have AC but all rooms had oscillating fans. In August we only needed to use them at night.
The hotel complimentary breakfasts are quite different. In the USA you go to the breakfast room of your (insert name of chain) inn and you obtain coffee from a pump pot. You equip yourself with a disposable plate and plastic utensils and opt for the steam table contents--usually reconstituted dry scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, perhaps biscuits and gravy. You'll also have a few cereals, some fresh fruit, some yogurts and pastries, and the delightful make-yoru-own waffle iron (or in HoJo, the pancake machine). In the UK, the utensils and plates and coffee cups are genuine certamic and metal--the coffee comes out of a machine that offers flat white or latte or mocha or others--the food is made fresh for the steam table and includes beans and mushrooms and if you're lucky blood sausage. All in all I like the waffle maker and coffee in the US better, but Britain has us beat on every other point.
I stayed in a B&B in the Mayfair section of London. There was a full English breakfast each morning. It was quite good. I had Afternoon Tea at Harrod's rather than at one of the more posh London hotels as I had neglected to make a reservation in time. I rather enjoyed it. I developed a taste for milk and sugar in my tea, Devonshire cream with scones, and British style bacon (rashers?).
@@MichaelScheele Those are good times! We enjoyed a B&B in Stratford-Upon-Avon where I got some more Shakespeare for me, and yes, that full -fast was memorable. The high point for me was Tadcaster, Yorkshire, where we stayed at the B&B that's run by the Samuel Smith Brewery. Good food to start the day, then go to the Angel and White Horse and drink my way carefully through the entire menu of Smith's. And the Crowne Plaza Heathrow had a breakfast buffet with all imaginable fry-up components. All with real ceramic plates and flatware and coffee mugs. Much more civilized, don't you think?
Difference for me: Breakfast is free in the US. Breakfast in Britain was split between full meals and continental. I chose continental at 6 in the morning. Dry cereal (two choices), one type of pastry, milk in open jug, some very sad looking fruit, and a £40 bill. Breakfast in Scotland was included. First day they served a plate full of lots of things. When done they asked what we liked and served our individual preferences to each of us for the remaining 3-4 days. No variety, but at least we liked what was served.
@@noylj1 Interesting. I don't recall ever paying for breakfast in England, and I stayed in several B&Bs and also several chain hotels. At every place I could get a pretty complete fry-up at no additional cost. Over on the continent I found I needed to pay extra for breakfast--but it was always a very good one (Barcelona was spectacular) and in France the free brekkie was continental style, which I unde3rstand is how those Parisians all like to start the day. I guess my choices of English lodgings were either lucky or inspired.
Just came back from London for the first time. The biggest differences i noted were as follows - outlets all had a switch next to them to turn them on and off - the hotel room lights wouldn’t go on unless I stuck my keycard in a slot next to the door and left it there - the bed didn’t have two sheets, just one covering the mattress and you slept under the cover with nothing else. Here we use two sheets - the sheet covering the mattress wasn’t a fitted sheet - all toilets had two buttons for one and two - the outlets in the bathroom were different from normal outlets. I guess razors have a different type of plug in the UK.
I have the two buttons on the toilets in my house... we purchased them at Home Depot (in the states) when fixing up an old house. These days it's mainly an efficiency thing. You don't need a ton of water to wash down #1 vs. #2. :) We've had them for about 10 years now and they've been great... smaller water bill.
@@johnp139 Exactly! Keep forgetting that name for the pop outs? In US are required in Apt. Kitchens as well as baths. Also have they heard of auto shut-off light switches or sensors near the doors. And our laws are so different? What about Exits laws...
The place you walk in is a "Lobby". Some elevators will have a 1, and others an "L". On rare occasions a "G". But inevitably it's actually usually CALLED a Lobby. This may change if some rooms are located elsewhere on that floor (vs. other services). In that case " First" or "Ground" might be used in other parts of the Floor, and only the entrance, check in, etc will be the Lobby. On very rare occasions, the land outside may not be level and the hotel may have multiple entrances, and they may be L1 and L2 (or G and L). There may also be underground levels as B1, B2, etc., also called P1 , P2, etc if its underground parking.
@Lost in the Pond - Completely irrelevant to this installment, but just having had a brief back-N-forth about pies [fruit based. And given your previous new-found pies you've tried here in the States, video]. There is another pie you must try... I cannot stress enough why this is a must-try pie = Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. I'm pretty confident you know of Rhubarb (and that it's a vegetable that is very sour). The combination of the two is amazing. This is something your wife know (since she's the real baker in the family... hehehee), Strawberry Rhubarb Pie has a very short window in which it can be made, fresh. Rhubarb season in just a bit before Strawberry season. It is truly a once a year opportunity (fresh...frozen berries and rhubarb [hard to find] will do, but frozen...) to make a pie.
In Australia we follow the UK system of floor naming for the most part. However so many modern buildings have entrances on different levels if they are built on hills. I have been in buildings before that have Lower Ground (LG), Ground (G) and Upper Ground (UG) floors in the one building. So I think the US system is superior and some Australian buildings (like the one I live in) do use it.
I'm an American living in Hong Kong and of British ancestry. I love your channel as I deal with much of this when my English vocabulary has changed to from living here.
when i was 15 i went to Austria (as an idiot Iowan) and was absolutely shocked that there were no screens in the windows. also they called the bathrooms water closets and they drank their sodas without ice. maybe one day i'll get to visit England.. but until then i'm stuck in small town america watching these videos. (thanks for the education! 😉)
Ground floor (G) vs. first floor (1) vs. Lobby (L) can be confusing in the US, too--I think that's why most public buildings put a star next to the floor you can walk out of the building from (..out from which you can walk...?)
When visiting London in 2009 we stayed at the Royal Horseguards. The room was smaller than most we’ve stayed in here and the narrow bathtub felt like being inside a torpedo. Other than that it was very nice and for our purposes a great location. It’s a lovely hotel.
It has been 25 years since I was in England but the hotel most clearly remembered is The University Arms in Cambridge. It was LOVELY and so was the staff. The biggest difference is that it was unlike any other hotel I've visited either in the US or any other country. Here we have cheap, middling & "sell your car to pay for one night here" qualities. Within each category, they are pretty much interchangeable- as though they came from Lego kits. In England there seemed to be much more individuality.
Many modern electronics are dual voltage, but you definitely need to check on the electrical label. I learned recently that UK video games on old consoles like SNES etc. ran slower than US video games due to the Hz difference.
I think the size of the room depends more on whether it's in the city or out of the city. Some rooms in upscale hotels in midtown Manhattan (New York) are little bigger than a coffin.
Regarding the size of British hotel rooms Iv stayed in several different size room. Some small, some larger. It tends to be dependant of the price of the room & the poshness of the hotel. Meaning pay more for larger rooms in some hotels. Also spa hotels can have slightly larger rooms than budget hotels.
I remember staying in a delightful old hotel in Glenridding, in the Lake District when I was a child. I recall that the building was so old that the floor sloped which I thought was a hoot. There was one shared bathroom at the end of the floor. Even the cheapest and oldest hotels in the US have private bathrooms. The only exceptions I can think of are a few bed and breakfasts. It didn't bother me back then, but I'm afraid it would now.
Hmm. I had a house in Alabama with the same kind of slope in the back room. I later realized that room had been a back porch that had been enclosed to made a den.
One of the biggest hotel rooms I ever had was in Carlisle, Cumbria. Room was ridiculously large. But I’ve also had UK hotel rooms where I had to get out of bed at the bottom of the bed and could barely turn in the shower (in London). Best places to stay in the UK are in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide. I hope to go back this summer and will use that to pick my lodgings.
@@pedanticradiator1491 I had to look at Maps to figure it out. This was 12 years ago, but I think it was the County Hotel. Not positive, but pretty sure.
The best thing I remember from staying in London was the electric tea kettle and shortbread cookies resupplied daily for my room and turn down service. After a full day of walking I could come back and chill with tea and cookies.
I commonly use the word Porter at the airport for the person who assist you outside with your bags or the person who might transport someone needing assistance in getting to the gate.
In London when we asked for salad dressing we were given mayonnaise. They had nothing like vinaigrette or blue cheese 😞 The numbering of floors is important to know if you travel with someone who cannot climb stairs and there is no elevator. We booked a room on the “first floor” and then found out that required climbing a full flight of stairs.
I think that is a peculiarity of where you ate. I’ve had thousands of salads in the UK, and while I know they have a mayo-like dressing called salad cream, I’ve never actually been given it on a salad. I’ve usually been given some kind of vinaigrette, but also Caesar, various Asian-style dressings, and for shrimp salads Marie Rose, which is like a shrimp Louis ie like thousand island.
We have lots of salad dressings in the UK, and, unless you order a salad that has a specific named dressing already on it, it will usually come with vinaigrette already on it. We don't have Ranch, but we definitely have things like blus cheese and vinaigrette - were you eating in a pub? I know Americans tend to eat in touristy pubs in London and then complain that the food is bad. If you eat in pubs in the tourist parts of London, you WILL get rubbish food. Unless the pub you go to in the centre of London advertises itself as a 'gastro-pub', it will be somewhere that sells cheap food to tourists. Pubs aren't restaurants, they are somewhere most Brits go to for a quick bite when they are out and about. If we go out for a meal, we go to a proper restaurant - there's a world of difference. Unless you want fish and chips - then you need to go to a fish and chip shop - anything else just isn't real fish and chips.
Not sure why American's find this a strange concept , you walk into a hotel on the ground , hence ground floor you then go up a level thus first floor, very simple really.
@@markbradley7323 Hotel in the US have hotel rooms on the same floor as the reception/lobby area. , which would be the first floor and the next floor would be the second floor.
Speaking of hotel rooms, I flew to London in 2007 and I stayed in a tiny hotel room with a single bed. I had never seen a single bed in a hotel room, nor a room that small. I was also very surprised at the tiny bathroom and shower. I think a really big person might have a problem getting into the tiny shower. It reminded me of a shower in an older travel trailer.
@@KFC_Pyongyang_AssistantManager lmao! If we have radiators in the bathroom in Canada they are usually the same kind as the radiators in the rest of the house, they don’t double as towel racks…well, I suppose they could but it’s just not the same!😊 I think it’s fair to say that in Canada most people here have central air natural gas furnaces or electricity, not many people have boilers anymore here.
@@clarissathompson pretty much everyone here has boilers. If not they will probably have a fireplace, but usually people with a fireplace also have a boiler (like me) :)
@@KFC_Pyongyang_AssistantManager ya, you usually will find homes that still have boilers on the West coast in Canada, they have a similar climate to England, but for those of us in the mountains or, especially, out in the prairies it’s just too cold for a boiler to efficiently heat a home. They don’t provide much comfort when it’s -20C outside. Where I live rarely gets much colder than -12C so you can still see older homes with boilers, especially Victorian era homes but people often also install electric base board heat to supplement it. Wood heat though, there’s nothing like a roaring fire on a cold damp day❤️
funny thing with elavators. we have ground floors. but its for basements essentially. or first floors but they are kinda underground. at south dakota mount rushmore. the ground floor is the first floor for employees while the first floor is the dinner for guests and the 2nd floor is a hydroponic garden for employees
Smallest hotel room we ever stayed in was in Germany. We had to put our sons in the bathtub and my husband and I tried to sleep on what amounted to a twin sized bed(though smaller than an American twin). To be fair we were lucky to find a room at all as our cabbie told us “Slick Villie” was in town and hotels were booked up. (That’s Bill Clinton if you didn’t understand our cabbie’s accent) 🤪
I used to travel annually to London on business. Maybe it was just the hotel where I stayed, but there was no alarm clock in the room. There was, however, a lovely selection of tea and biscuits that was replenished every day. The hotel was owned by a beer company, and two bottles of their beer were also provided daily.
Not all hotel bathrooms are handicap friendly. Some say they are and when I get to one they have a very low toilet and the tub has no handle bars and the shower chair they have sucks. I've only ever been to two hotels that had bathrooms that were really handicap friendly.
I was in a hotel that advertised that recently and thankfully I don't need that access but I'm a larger person and I could barely fit inside the bathroom by myself, I very much doubt a person could wheel in and transfer to the toilet from the chair. And the shower door only opened 12" wide (I had to go in sideways as did my average size husband lol) and had no seating or tub or anything. No way they could make that work. I hope they had other rooms that were actually ADA compliant.
YOU are HYSTERICAL!!! I would prefer the GROUND floor being called the Ground floor as they do in Britian, makes much more sense! Many times I get on an elevator and never know which floor is the GROUND floor because they have parking beneath the GROUND FLOOR!!!
Thanks for another fun and informative video! Some of the differences in hotels between the U.S. and the U.K., particularly London is that quite often, the room seems to be an odd shape and beds don't seem to fit logically in the room. For instance, in one hotel we stayed in, the bed was stuffed in the corner of the room partially covering a window. Many of the hotels seem to have been converted from buildings that served another purpose and they just made the best of it and crammed the beds in the room. The typical breakfasts were different as well. U.S. hotels tend to favor the "Continental" breakfast, whereas in the U.K., the "Full English" was the most common option. This was all from my experiences visiting London, and with 4 star hotels that were decidedly more affordable than their posh counterparts. So, maybe its not like this in general across the U.K. Another word that I've commonly heard for sofas that convert to beds is, "Sofabed". This is what I've most commonly heard across the U.S. I grew up mostly in the Mid-Atlantic and the Southwest USA.
The oddest shape I’ve ever seen was in NYC. My sons room was maybe a Z?? It was like they took two broom closets and added a connecting hallway at an angle….. very very strange.
@@bethotoole6569 Maybe it's just down to older buildings being converted to hotel spaces then. I guess I just got 'lucky' in London with odd shaped rooms. Haha! In NYC I ended up staying in hotels like Hilton, where all the rooms were square. Having said all that, I did really love my time in London and I would LOVE to go back to the UK sometime soon!
No bathrooms in the hotel rooms in London! To be fair, it was an old hotel (The Chelsea). We asked for a room with a bath, and that's exactly what we got - a bathtub. The W.C. was in the hallway along with the shower.
You forgot a big difference that caught me by surprise when I went to the UK - British hotels don't provide you with washcloths! This was no small quirky hotel we were staying in - it was a luxury hotel. Very weird. I had to buy some from a local shop.
It's not weird, they aren't washcloths, they're flannels, and not widely used in the uk, they are for faces, not bodies. I use them to take my makeup off as an alternative to makeup wipes, to save on waste.
I'm afraid the way I was raised you would be considered dirty for not washing with the washcloth from top to bottom I often ask men when I date them whether they use a washcloth if they don't I consider them lazy and dirty and I think no wonder their underarms stink I tell a man to bathe from top to bottom with a washcloth or else forget about being with me.
Also my parents were of fairly recent European extract well father about two generations ago came from Swedish and German mother german-russian grandmother still made her own soap the DNA revealed a lot of Scottish Lily white with blue eyes the whole family.
I’ve only stayed in Alderly Edge/Cheshire so this could be isolated, but also noticed there’s no king sized bed, it was just 2 beds smushed together with a large comforter; and even though there’s no air conditioning you can at least open the windows which is nice b/c most all US hotels don’t
Many hotels in the US don’t want their windows to open for 2 reasons. 1. For safety reasons, to keep out “undesirables” from preying on guests. 2. For fire (and insurance) reasons to prevent the spread of flames. It also helps maintain adequate heating/cooling costs for the motel.
I have stayed in very tiny British hotels, but while in Edinburgh I stayed in a hotel that was about 3/4 the size of my row house. The bathroom was bigger than my kitchen!
Room size can vary quite a lot within the same hotel. I once stayed in an Edwardian hotel in Bournemouth where I could almost span the width of the room with my outstretched arms while a friend on the same floor was in a double room that easily 5 times the size. I figured my room had once been either a servants room or that floor's linen closet.
My experience in UK hotels is that they charge more for everything. The big one was being charged “per person per night” where in the US hotels seem cheaper, off more and typically don’t charge extra when 2 are spending the night
While this is less common now when I first went to England 40 some years ago, geysers supplying hotwater in the bath, or even slightly more terrifying electric shower water heaters in the shower with you. The other thing that is different is that is still possible to using the British term en suite to describe a full bathroom as part of your room that not all rooms are en suite. I have often stayed in smaller cities away from London were you do need to check this when renting a room for the night.
Oh the joys of sharing the bathroom with everyone on that floor!! I found that in Belgium too…. Actually everywhere I went in Europe had similar issues:)
It’s been some time, but all the hotels I’ve used in the UK had the rooms numbered sequentially, with no regard to the floor. On our last trip, room “15” turned out to be on the 5th floor.
You weren’t kidding about the differences in hotels. I stayed at the Saint Giles hotel in London in a 2005. My God, was I shocked when I went into a single room there. A single bed and not much space. And the toilet. It reminded me of my college dorm room in the United States not, a hotel room. In my hop around England I ended up back at the Saint Giles hotel later in my stay over there. This time I was in a regular size room with two beds. Again, both of them singles not queens or whatever. And a small sitting room and a toilet. And, I will say I froze my ass off. Middle of winter and I was freezing. I am from Minnesota, I know cold brutal weather but, I could not believe how cold I was over there. In more of the American hotel chains that were over there like the best western that I stayed at, the beds and rooms seem to be more Americanized. Although, at that same hotel when you left you pulled the key out of a wall socket and it automatically turned off all the lights. Now that, was completely bizarre to me. But very interesting The lights in the room did not work if you didn’t put your key in this device. It had the hotel key on one end, and a plastic device for going into the wall for the lights on the other end. Also, that whole shower thing I’m so grateful I didn’t fall out of it all wet and soaked up. There were many times, I thought I was going to do just that.
The keycard in the slot to turn on the electricity is not a bad idea. It saves energy as many people can’t be arsed to turn off the lights when they leave the room and it is next to the door which means you see it when you leave so there is less chance of leaving without it. You do have to make sure the sockets are still able to be used to charge up any devices you don’t take with you of course but otherwise it’s not a bad idea. It’s a bit strange to see one fastened to a conventional key though.
@@egpx It's usually just a low-tech solution, being a chunk of regular plastic used as a large key tag which when pushed into the slot is just pushing on a momentary switch which stays on until you remove the tag. You can therefore shove anything in there the right thickness to hold the switch closed. Very useful for keeping the room cool/warm if you're out for a while where it has individual room temperature control (or for charging items as you say).
If you were so cold why didn't you speak to the hotel staff and either get the heating checked or get a portable heater, pretty dumb not to do something about it. Room sizes in London generally reflect on the general demands on space in London, age of the hotel and in most cases the cheaper the hotel the smaller the rooms tend to be.
0:28 - Canada is barely 4 hours away and Mexico is just a little over 20 so you could add two more countries over a weekend for the price of gas/indigestion.
At least you’d be able to have a decent bath. Every American hotel I’ve ever stayed in which includes a ‘bathtub’ basically has a shallow tray that can only hold enough water to wet your arse and maybe your feet too.
@@gemoftheocean I don’t. I do like a nice soak in the bath though and those small baths you get in some hotels don’t allow it and seem pretty pointless to me. Maybe you could bath your young kids in one but a thirteen stone (!) bloke like me doesn’t fit!
On our honeymoon in London we were assigned a hotel room in a quite posh neighbourhood that was big enough for us or our luggage but not both. Also we had no hot water. The room cost >$300/ night decades ago. My generally soft-spoken husband went down to the lobby and demanded a better room. We got a slightly larger one with room to lay out our luggage and a functional shower. But the breakfast was nice as was the pub next door where we rested after our days outings
I used to always push different lower level button just to see where it went, one time it opened the back door to the laundry area🤣, they were shocked and I felt bad for them
One thing I also remember is that public lights in the hallways and stairs could be on a timer switch and therefore not always on. You would have to punch a switch to turn them on to walk up and down the stairways in Europe.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
Fifty years ago when I was in my dewy early twenties, I went to England for a couple of weeks. One day during my travels I found that I would need what in the US was termed a “wake up call”. Noticing that there was no phone in the hotel room to contact the desk manager, I made my way downstairs to speak to him about how to arrange said wake up call. The young and decidedly handsome young desk clerk said in a beautiful British accent, “No problem. I’ll come by in the morning and knock you up”. I was more than a little bit stunned when I heard this and all I could think to say was, “I don’t think my mother would like that.” He looked quite puzzled and replied, “What do you mean? I’m just gonna come knock at your door at the time you requested.” After a sigh of relief, I informed him that the phrase had quite a different meaning in America.
😂😂😂Sorry but that is hysterical!!!
@@marykleeberg7162 no need to be sorry. Of all my travel stories, this one gets the most laughs. So glad you enjoyed it!
@@susan3037 💜❤
That's hilarious! What was his response when you explained what the phrase meant in America?
In the days of the Industrial Revolution in the UK in a time before homes had power or even windup clocks, there was a person called a Knocker Upper who would walk the streets with a long pole to knock on peoples windows to wake them for work in the factories. This was taught in history lessons at school but I was too scarred of Mr Hughes the history teacher to ask who Knocks Up the Knocker Upper.
“…an equal number of marriage proposals” had me laughing. Your deadpan delivery of such lines never fails to amuse. Keep up the good work.
Just to clarify - you often will see "G" for ground floor here in the U.S., but the next floor up will be "2." You also might see "L" for "Lobby" in place of "G", or in addition to it if there happens to be a ground floor below the main reception area.
Or P for parking under the building
@@taffykins2745 👍 sometimes simply "G" as well.
Or B for basement, rare, but it happens.
@@judyhorstmann6332
Not really rare. You'll see B, B2, B3, etc. if there are multiple basement levels.
I've been in an elevator in America with a G for garden level which most would call a floor between the 1st floor and the basement.
On the subject of elevators in the USA. If you see a star next to a number the star designates the floor in which the main entrance is located on. See time stamp 1:56 for an example.
My wife and I went to Ireland for our 1 year wedding anniversary, she specifically booked a hotel in Dublin that stated it had air conditioning because she likes to sleep in an icebox. When we checked in and noticed the room didn’t have the typical air conditioner system you see in US hotels, we asked the reception staff if this was a mistake, and they said the air conditioning that was advertised was that the windows could be opened. Luckily this wasn’t an issue with our stay as it remained relatively comfortable the whole time. It was definitely one of those small experiences that made the trip memorable.
Okay, that’s good but truth is the hotel lied. People in Ireland know about air conditioning.
Now that's beyond the pale and dishonest. Hotels in Europe know well what an AC is even if it's a window one or weaker than in the US. So glad you enjoyed your stay for such an important occasion and not caught in a miserable heat wave as it could and has ruined ruined friends experiences in non air conditioned hotels. They picked the hotel w/o AC, though. Oftentimes it was in the 80s. Ireland is cooler than the UK though, but getting hotter d/t climate change like most places.
@@Laura-kl7vi -- *Do not be passing along your climate change propaganda here.*
@@stormythelowcountrykitty7147 Agreed. You were lied to. When I booked my hotel in a smallish town in Ireland, I exchanged emails that were very specific about air conditioning in the rooms. (I was there in July...so....) I was glad to feel cool air in the lobby area and in my room!
Keeping your power adapters for overseas travel in your empty carry-on makes a handy reminder when you go to pack for a trip. Saves hunting all over the house for an item used only when traveling.
And multi-adapters are great since there are many different plug types out there.
I keep most of my travel accessories in my empty luggage so I don't lose it (which I do when I go to pack because I moved it somewhere).
Yes, and beware the adapter plugs…they can fry things out…don’t cheap out on them. I really wish there was a universal plug size/voltage…would make things simpler, but probably pretty complicated to do at this point.
Those travel adaptors fail to work fairly often . If it is just for charging a phone, just buy a charger plug in the country, the EU and much of Asia uses the same plug.
Northern Europe hotels often have "double beds" that are two twin beds pushed together. I asm a snuggler; at best I end up sleeping in the crack or have ended up on the floor when the beds split apart. They usually have twin size sheets and blankets too.
Most US hotels have carpet; which sucks if someone has allergies or previous occupant has smoked in the room, frankly I just find carpete in hotel rooms icky.
In Asia many hotels give you toothbrushes and tooth paste. In love hotels they provide aftershave and lotion too. 🤐🤤😎 In the 90's Korean love hotels had free VCR tapes to use; for an extra the ones behind the desk could be used too. (Porn was illegal but available).
I love that Lawrence pronounces ‘three’ the same way the old tootsie pop owl used to when counting how many licks it takes to get to the center
😂😂That's so true! I kept thinking when he'd say three it wad familiar! When I read your comment it totally clicked! Thanks for the laugh!
Oh yeah! [give myself a dope slap to the forehead], I remember that commercial. Thankfully someone posted it on youtube, I just watched it for nostalgia sake.
He pronounces the word like I do, but I'm from Texas. I got it from Mom, who taught English.
How do Americans pronounce three? I thought there was only one way of pronouncing it, to rhyme with tree, free or even gee.
Yes we pronounce it as three. Lawrence rolled his rs
As an American, on my first visit to England, I was stunned by the tiny hotel rooms! I even tried quite an expensive hotel and the room was still very small 😢
Me as well, a bit. Very old hotels in some old East Coast cities (few that there are now--sadly in the last decade or so they are being replaced w modern ones) can have small rooms compared to modern ones. After all, places like Boston are literally 400 years old so have old buildings that can be charming and eclectic somewhat like in Europe/the UK. They are usually furnished with older (but not worn-more like charming) furniture and decor. They (were) lovely. When I travel alone I strongly prefer these. They have double beds, which is fine for me when alone.
I think they've gotten bigger over the years. I stayed in Manhattan once, and the room barely fit the bed. I also stayed at the Watergate a few years ago, and while bigger than the one I was at in NYC, it was still pretty small compared to a newer place.
Lol. I can't believe you've stretched out "America" vs "British" differences for as many years as you have. It's definintely it's own kind of talent.
And brilliant…..
Ice machines tend to be typical in the US, but not in the UK. Or perhaps other places too, I haven't traveled a lot. The first hotel I stayed at in London, the woman at the front desk told me I could get ice at the pub in the hotel when I asked where the ice machine was. I could hear her tell the woman she was training that Americans often ask for ice machines :) The last 2 hotels on that trip (out of 4) had an ice machine. I did a little happy dance in my hotel room to Ice, Ice Baby. It wasn't even so much that I wanted ice in my water, but if you don't have a fridge you can make a substitute refrigerator out of the ice bucket.
Haha Ice ice baby
I remember traveling to NYC in about 1992 and staying in a hotel that had an actual elevator operator and the little "cage" door! That hotel did not have an ice machine. When I rang the front desk to ask about an ice machine, they offered to bring me a bucket of ice. I tipped the man $1.
Hallways in lots of British hotels (esp the older ones) make a really fun maze! "To find your room, go just down this hall until the first left. Then go straight until the hall turns left & right. Then turn right. Your room will be the second one after the hall turned left again."
I figured that was because they added wings over the years. In the US, we tend more to knock them down and rebuild to a larger plan.
Hah, so true. I don’t think it’s because wings were added - I’ve had the impression they are fire doors.
That's another difference Lawrence missed; a US 'hallway' is a corridor in the UK.
Lawrence, in the US, we use First Floor and Ground Floor interchangeably. If you told people you're going to the ground floor of any building in the US, they won't look at you strange. The only thing confusing the Brits with the rest of the world is that they're separate floors in Britain. Why? I don't know.
Not only in Britain. In most of the world ground floor is zero and the first floor is above it. You need to go upstairs to get to room 101. That's at least the case in all of Europe and the Middle East. That doesn't only applies to hotel but to any building.
I was shocked when I moved to the US and noticed the missing zero.
They used to have a G on the buttons years ago in many American buildings. And also a B for basement. Don't know why it changed.
Dates back to Colonialism.
@@jameskearney4100 I still see that in elevators all the time. Perhaps it's a regional thing?
@@tonymouannes Many hotels don't have guest rooms on the ground floor, in which case room numbers will still identify floor numbers.
Ground floor : My next-door neighbour, who is 96, told me that when she was a girl she visited a nearby house where the floor of the hall and living room were actually made of compacted soil. Literally the ground floor. Most houses were like that in the middle ages, so the first lot of floorboards were above your head when you went in.
My parents had dirt floors here in Michigan when they were kids. My mom is 73 years old
Wow, I never thought of it that way. But it makes sense!
When I was in Birmingham a couple years back, I kept going down to the 1st floor and getting out, only to realize I was not at ground level. I did it more times that I care to admit because it was an embarrassing amount of times
American hotel rooms often have a small coffee brewer while those in the UK have electric kettles.
and they give you real milk instead of creamer packets.
@@thefowlyetti2 Except the coffee supplied is powdered (with milk). Not fresh coffee like those supplied in the USA.
@@EinkOLED Depends if you class filter coffee as genuine coffee.
@@thefowlyetti2 It tastes more like genuine coffee than instant.
I've been binge watching your videos for the past couple hours. Love your channel. It's a lot of fun!
Have never been to the UK, but I've noticed some differences when reading a book by an author across the pond in regards to rooms in hotels/homes and often had to reach for a dictionary at times only to find out they are what i thought they were. However, I've been learning a lot just watching this channel about those differences. Thank you, Laurance!!!
We stayed in a hotel in Florida and had 2 King-size beds, a coffee maker, fridge with a small freezer and a safe. We also had an arcade and 2 swimming pools and a restaurant attached to the hotel.
The hotel I work at has both a lobby and a foyer. The foyer being a super tiny room you first enter when coming in through the front door. Then another door that opens into the lobby. Helps keep the heat/cold from outside from getting in.
Another fancy word for a small room or space you pass through between the door and the main room is "vestibule".
@@edwardblair4096 And then there's people like me who just call it the Airlock.
Thank you Laurence. I've been needing some levity to lighten the atmosphere.
Your video section on the bath had my boyfriend and I dying laughing, especially me! I'm American and visiting my English boyfriend for the first time in England. I'm also a major klutz. His bath tub is very tall and also not equal to the floor... I'm also a short 4'11"/150cm. Getting in was a challenge in itself, but then when I got out I forgot about the height difference and ended up on the floor. My head fortunately was a few inches from the door and I can say I definitely scared him! I quickly got up and let him know I wasn't dead. Lol
omg you poor thing, glad you could have a laugh about it!!!! 😂
We were recently in England, Wales, and Scotland. The differences I noticed in the hotels (compared to those in the US) were: the windows in the hotels could be opened, they didn't provide washcloths but the towels were huge, when we went down for breakfast they would ask our room number and then check off a list and sometimes even took us to our table, and our room had a single bed plus a queen-size bed. It's possible that the latter is available in the US but I've never seen it. Usually you either have 1 king, 1 queen, or 2 queens. Sometimes there's a foldout couch.
I've been reading a bit more and it's possible that we lucked out on towel sizes. I've seen as many complaints as I've seen compliments on their size
But no comfortable chair to crash in at the end of a long day. And only one chair, anyway.
We are going to be there in about 6 weeks..... southern England hotels. Never been, but thought this video would be helpful.
The lack of washcloths threw me for a loop. I'd always taken them for granted, and not one of my tourist survival guides thought to mention the BYOW situation.
@@sleepybobo2403 If you did need to purchase a washcloth in the UK you would need to ask for a flannel.
At my height (6'4") the raised bathtub made standing up a bit difficult. No outlets in the bathroom, or shaver only. Also you often need to put you room card in a receptacle just inside to door to get the lights to come on.
That’s why you ask for 2 card keys in the UK and much of Europe. Just put one of the cards in the receptacle and use the other normally.
@@pacmanc8103 It seems to be something that is less of a problem now as so many people need to leave items on charge when they are out of the room and taking the keycard out turns off the wall sockets. Also any credit card sized card will normally will work in the keycard switch, even a piece of folded paper.
@@duncanflood7983 Good idea - I’ll try a business card next time as a test.
It is illegal in Britain to have power outlets in a bathrooms
@@pedanticradiator1491 That makes it tough to shave with an electric shaver.
I remember staying in London back in the late 90s and the British hotel did not furnish wash cloths. The front desk said that it was a personal item. Also, no shower curtain in my tub....had to strategically shower with a shower head in a old-fashioned legged tub without spraying the entire bathroom area. Very challenging.
Primitive.
I used a hand towel as my “flannel” as they call a wash cloth there. Wouldn’t toilet paper also be considered a personal item? And to think that I’m Japan you are provided with pajamas and slippers!
@@johnp139 but in Japan are the hotels heated? I've heard from a one year visitor that all public buildings offices, schools even some Apartment buildings all heat is absolutely turned off at 5pm. Close of business and on weekends?
That hasn't changed. Was in London right before the pandemic and they still don't provide washcloths.
Flannels are personal items, yes. We don't wash our bodies with them. They are for faces. You bring your own.
Additional observations: Some of the London hotels I've stayed in didn't have operable windows (there was one, but it was painted over and according to the building map would have opened into an airshaft). The bathtub faucet was a giant dial with no instructions on how it worked so I had to call down to the desk for assistance on that one... many small places have no elevator at all, just narrow staircases. The plugs have switches next to them that you have to flip or else the plug won't work. Daily housekeeping is not a given. People who are the least bit claustrophobic really need to do their homework before selecting a hotel in the UK.
Amost no Amercan hotels have operable windows usually because the rooms are air condition and supposedly have no need for ventilation... but also to reduce the number of suicides, which interfere with business.
@@WCM1945 This is true, but American hotel windows - even if sealed - are transparent, not painted over. So they still function to see through.
if you like claustrophobic in a hotel you should try hotels in Amsterdam. When I went to sit down in the bathroom I hit my head on the closed door. The surprise made me laugh but it was unexpected. you don't do it twice.
I learned about the ability to shut off the electricity to the room altogether when I visited Kenya; there is quite a strong British influence there, still. And in the US, for the past few years, there is now NO automatic daily housekeeping services... which I LOVE. Yes, they need to make a living too, but as I get older, discovering that some stranger came into my room, unescorted, and put his/her hands all over my stuff gives me the creeps to infinity. Don't touch my stuff.
Daily housekeeping was certainly a given before the pandemic, unless you were staying at some of the really bottom end hotels. I’m hoping it will come back on the road to normality but there’s no certainty that it will.
My dad is the "DO NOT TOUCH THE THERMOSTAT!" kind of person because of you know...bills. But when he gets into a hotel in the summer he turns that thing as low as possible.
I hate this about people. Especially my husband. I run my AC for comfort, wherever I am.
One problem with setting a hotel AC lower than you are comfortable is that nowadays, the more 'modern' ones will turn on the actual HEATER if you simply turn the thermostat up 1 measly degree!!!
As a retired hotelier, the term bellhop is an antiquated term. We commonly use porter now. We do call the area between two sets of entrance/exit doors a foyer. The reason for two sets of doors is to help keep the temperature in lobby from being effected by the outside weather.
As a non-hospitality-industry American, I can confirm bellhop or bellboy are words I've never used and make me think of old movies. However, I've never really used "porter" in the hotel context either as it generally makes me think of the similar role on a train or ship rather than a hotel. I suppose I've always just said something like "hotel staff."
*affected
@@jameswoodard4304 interesting. But what do you call the bellhop/porter specifically? Like, when you are specifically wanting to talk about that position as opposed to all hotel staff, what do you say? I'm American and I always bellhop/bellman/bellboy.
@@ekaski1 ,
I honestly don't think it's ever come up. For example, if I were at a hotel and I wanted help with some bags, I would call the front desk and say, "Yes, I'm in Room XYZ. Could you send someone up for our bags, please." I've never really needed to use that specific job title in conversation, at least not as far as I can recall.
@@jameswoodard4304 ah ok, I see, that makes sense. I have a lot of young people in my life, so I have often had to teach people proper etiquette, particularly regarding tipping, for bellhops, valets, concierges, housekeeping, etc.
I've only had to explain floor numbering a couple of times in the hotel in which I work, G is often substituted for O. Big hotels near Heathrow or in London may have more first time American tourists to Britain that a 'small' 95 bed hotel in northern Scotland
Explain that 3* hotels even for the well known brand hotel I work, don't have a restaurant (after breakfast), room-service or 24 hour housekeeping is more common.
We do find ourselves using some American / international terminology just to make things a bit easier to understand.
Floor 0? Is the entrance to every British hotel in the Twilight Zone?
So, a military man entering a British hotel at midnight finds himself standing in 0 level at 0000? He exists in neither space nor time.🤯
Honestly, I think the numbering difference may be related to other differing terminology. "Story" has a bit more of an implication of being off the ground, while "floor" pretty much *has* to include the literal ground. So where "floor" has been more common, the ground level is included, but where "story" has been more common and for a longer period, the ground level has not been counted as a "story."
This is 100% a guess, so don't attack me when you find out it's complete nonsense.
what if the hotel has infinate amount of floors?
The term 'valet' is used in the UK but it refers to a person who is a professional car cleaner who does both inside and outside of your car. So valet service here wouldn't park your car, they'd take it away and clean it.
Take it away? In the U.S., car wash services come to your house or workplace and wash your car in your driveway or parking lot, right where you parked it. Though where I live, most people take their cars to a car wash, if they don't wash it themselves in their driveway.
I was thinking the same thing about “porter” (an old railway term).
A hotel porter is a custodian/janitor in the US
One of my favorite things about hotels in the UK and Ireland is having an electric teapot in your room. In one hotel in Coventry the radiator wasn't working and so I went to the front desk and informed them about this and they said they would send someone around with an electric heater. After about an hour one of the staff members turned up the promised heater which gave me visions of not shivering the rest of the evening. But such was not to be as the flaming thing didn't work. I visited the front desk again and was told the electric heater I was given was the only one in the hotel. So in order to get some heat in the room I filled up the tea pot and used it to boil water which slightly raised the temperature in the room.
The next day I checked out early moved to a hotel closer to the city center where oddly enough their radiators worked.
The Brits would call it an electric kettle, rather than an electric teapot. You were unlucky with the radiator... normally they work all too well!
It's a kettle. We wouldn't even say "electric kettle", it's just a kettle.
@@juliaw151 Fair point-- we have no truck for those heathen boil-on-hob contraptions in the UK.
@@arthurterrington8477 nah I hate them lol
I ran into a lack of air conditioning staying at a Toronto hotel in the summer. I complained to the management it wasn't getting cold enough and they said they'd look at it and never did. Also there was no sort of device to absorb the impact of doors closing so everytime anyone closed their door it sounded like a cannon blast.
Also Archer teaches us he's a valet like mallet when he's your manservant and valet like ballet when he's parking your car.
one thing I have encountered in London and other parts is that the electrical outlets are sometimes controlled by an on and off switch or button. I remember staying in a hotel and tried to use the electrical outlet and for some reason it wouldn't work. Called down to the front desk and was told to try the switch on the wall. Which I assume was a light switch, but instead was the on/off for the power receptacle.
many of the hotels in the UK are converted rooms from mansions (at least I think) and these usually have no lift at all.
I remember arriving late at night, very tired, at a hostel in Australia. I didn't turn the lights on because I didn't want to wake the other people in the room, so I just got ready for bed by the light of my cell phone, then plugged the phone up to charge and went to bed. When I woke up I went to get the phone, since I had plans for that morning and needed to use the navigation app to know how to get there, only to find a dead phone plugged into a power outlet that was turned off. My first thought of the day, "Crap! They do it here too!!"
I heard recently that it's because of the voltage difference. That sounds reasonable, since other countries have higher voltage it's safer to have the current turned off while unplugging things.
You are describing an essential safety feature. The switch turns off rhe current on all appliances connected to the socket.
I'm aware of that. but we don't have that in the states.
@@snowangelnc Continental Europe doesn't have that switch though, even though the voltage is the same as in the UK (230V).
All plug sockets have on off switches, our plug sockets are a much higher voltage than the US but yet are much safer due to the third prong having to "open" the plug socket and the on off switch.
I have a different view on bath tubs in at least one London hotel that I stayed at. The tub was large and comfortable and being use to showers I found the soak very relaxing. I asked my significant other if she thought it would fit in the luggage because I really wanted to take it home with me including the heated towel rods.
Perhaps you could have asked the hotel staff to saw it into luggage-size pieces for you. However, you still would not meet the airline weight allowance.
Laurence, I love your American accent saying "power converter" and "foyer" 🤣
I worked for a while as a desk clerk in a small hotel in Arkansas. For reasons beyond the scope of this comment, we had a lot of Swedish travelers. One thing they almost always commented on was that they had never seen a hotel where the rooms open to the outdoors rather than to the interior of the hotel. At least in Arkansas, either option would be about as common.
To be honest, that is pretty weird to me. For a hotel or house (how could you even attach a screen door, if you wanted?) - but not a store, where it is common to pull open one door and push the other if they aren’t automatic. Outward-opening doors seem as though they could be dangerous, too. Are you sure they are equally common in Arkansas?!
@@pacmanc8103 I think you are misunderstanding - it's not that the doors swing outward, but that you step out of your hotel room and are no longer in the hotel. You don't need to pass through the lobby to get to your room.
@@davidray6962 If the rooms are exterior entrance you are at a Motel (Motor Hotel). A hotel where you drive your car right up to your door.
Usually in the US, motels open to outside walkways whereas hotel rooms open to an interior hallway.
@@davidray6962 Hah - sorry!😂
I've stayed in only one hotel in Britain, in London, and yeah, the room was pretty small. It was air-conditioned, though. The only thing that caught me by surprise was a scale in the workout room. It gave me my weight as 12 stone and some pounds. I'd never heard of a stone as a unit of weight.
I'll never think that stone is anything other than an incredibly stupid unit of weight.
@Paul Kostiak Correct
I know, let's not use kilos, let's use some other measure- I got it! a stone, a boulder more like
@@yondie491 The "stone" is the only reason I can maintain a modicum of smugness when a Brit makes fun of us for not using metric.
@@HermanVonPetri why not "bonnet" or "lorry" or their entire cuisine?
There are tons of options
Not willing to read over 900 comments below to see if anyone has mentioned this already - but one thing I noticed in my UK vs. US travels is that American hotels provide bath towels, hand towels and face-cloths, whereas I have never been provided with a face-cloth in the UK. Someone told me that this sized linen would be considered a personal item, like a handkerchief and if one wanted one, they would bring it with them while travelling.
And I do -- even in the US. I bring my own face cloths so that I can remove makeup and get the towel as dirty as I care to without feeling bad for messing up a nice, white hotel towel.
My favorite hotel in Britain was in cheltenham. It was called The Queens Hotel now, but when it was first built and christened, it was called The Kings Hotel. Well… the King died so, what to do? Change the name. This is so unlike what we would do in the US that I’ve never forgotten it. Plus the hotel was charming. As was the staff. And the tea.
It’s probably been renamed again in the past year
The hotels in New York are closer to European hotels when it comes to the size of the room. There is also a huge difference between a hotel which is often upscale, while a motel (or motor-inn) is more down scale as just a place to stay overnight during a long road trip. In fact the word motel comes from combining the words hotel and motor.
The first Motel is in San Luis Obispo California.
True this. When I stayed in NYC a few years ago, I got to my room, opened the door, and nearly fell out the window.
I have never seen an ice bucket in a British hotel room. Since there are no ice machines, this makes sense.
This. In US/Canada, you get a ice bucket and go fill it up at the ice machine, often on your floor by the elevator/lift. In London, I had to go down to the hotel bar, off the reception foyer and ask for ice. I was given a glass with 3 cubes. Told the guy to stop being tight, its just water. Said the ice freezer was a 5 minute walk away, so just gave me all the ice he had. A half-pint mug of ice.
We had this situation too in London and we had purposely packed gallon sized ziplock bags so the hotel bar could pack the ice in those.
@@Britishdave09 yeah.. there are a lot of brits who work in hotels wondering what it is the americans are doing with all that ice.. i've never understood the obsession with having 2 pint holders for ice. you used to have to pus ice machines in some braned hotels, but it's been stopped now as they are noisy, messy, and hardly ever used (except by americans) and are a bit of a hygene / food safety nightmare as they are used so rarely.
I am 6'3" and travel to Britain quite a bit. I have never stayed in any hotels there that actually have a shower door or a shower curtain. I always feel bad for the housekeepers because the water bounces off of me and right on the bathroom floor. I don't get it. Why no shower door or even a curtain? There is a small glass section near the bottom that does nothing.
Huh, that's odd. I've stayed at my share of British hotels over the years, but I don't remember showers with no curtains or doors.
Its just the little bit of glass there and the water bounces onto the floor. It was a daily mess.
@@DaveNHJ Oh yeah, I've definitely seen a few of those.
where the hell are you staying?
Thank you Lawrence! I needed that chuckle😅! Really enjoy your channel and your sense of humor.
On our only visit to Britain, we did notice the distinct lack of air conditioning (A/C) in many hotel rooms. Being from the southern U.S. we have grown accustomed to having A/C. We also noticed the climate was so mild , relatively, that we easily coped with the lack.
I went to Britain back in the 90’s. When me and my brother checked into the hotel we were shocked on how small it was. I would say it was about 10’x15’. Once you add the two standard size beds, it left just enough room for you to walk. The choice was simple, either sit on one of the beds or go to the bathroom.
My experience with staying in hotels in Britain is 50+ years old now, but I distinctly remember staying in a small hotel Easter weekend once. It was after April 1, and the heat had been turned off for the year. And it was freezing cold! I remember lying in one place in my bed all night, wrapped in my mother's thick winter coat, just to stay warm. Was this a common thing, is it one now? To turn the heat off so uncompromisingly that the guests are left to freeze, lol? It obviously made a strong impression on my 10 year old mind.
Spent the night with a friend in England. His mom worked at RAF Upper Heyford but lived in a nearby village. Remember sleeping (winter) in a bed that had no heat .. but the bed had about 10 comforters.
We had a similar experience in England. It was in May & it got down in 40s F at night & it was cold in our hotel room. My granny complained to receptionist only to be told that it was quite warm, really.
Hotels in the north of Scotland in March/April are often very very damp and freezing. In a smaller town the proprietor will have straw/hay on his clothing from feeding the sheep. You will never get the musty smell out of your clothes. Be prepared to spend the big bucks on a posh place but even then chances are the heating pipes will be banging all night. Last time over I rented a house but the smell still :(
I went in late winter when the heat should have been on and it was freezing almost everywhere. A couple places I had to wear my winter coat to bed and still shivered the whole night. One place right on a busy street had the radiator under the window but with thick floor-length drapes, so I had to choose between heat and privacy from leering drunks. If I ever go back, I'm just packing a down mummy bag.
Where I live in America I haven't used heating since February, but it's been over 65 degrees. 😂
So funny! This chap's videos are guaranteed to set me up for the day.
I went in 1985 and stayed at a hotel called The Regent Palace in Picadilly Circus. I thought it was normal for there, but the rooms didn't have a bath and you had to use a common one at the end of the hall. I thought this was normal for over there.
Was normal at the time but not now except in some small B&B places
Funny you should mention that hotel. Stayed there with friend in 1978 just after I finished college. None of the three of us had ever used a shared bathroom in a hotel before that wasn't en suite. Have to say having to "book" a bath was odd. We stayed in a big room with 3 single beds. I gather it's been torn down for some years now. The maid staff really earned their keep. The bathroom was immaculately cleaned.
The main building facade is still there as it is a listed building. Most of the old style mega hotels ( the RP had 1000+ rooms at one time) went out of business decades before.
I've never experienced such whiplash as I did when he said "powurr convurturrrr".
Most, but not all, of the rooms that I have stayed in in London have been small. The price charged for all of these rooms was large.
And have you ever stayed in New York?
First time I ever saw heated towel racks was on vacation in Britain. I've never seen them at hotels here, but I suppose there are American hotels that have them.
Those are very rare here - I think it’s because the room and attached bath is generally set at a certain temperature, so the bathroom isn’t chilly at all. Heated towel racks are pretty common all over Europe, I’ve found.
When you find one lemme know. When get my first home this is a MUST!
We had heated "towel racks" where we stayed in Mongolia. It was a Soviet-style apartment building. The plumbing was exposed, and the hot water pipes made great towel racks. We were also happy when the electricity was turned on; they needed to have planned rolling blackouts. I hope conditions are better there now, but I don't know if they are.
@@morganschiller2288If you’re buying them, you can get electric ones, or ones that are essentially central heating radiators, plumbed in to the circulating heating water.
Elevator markings in these United States varies greatly, I've notice. I've seen the ground floor marked with "1," "G," and "L"(for Lobby) in three different buildings on the same block. Adding to the confusion, some elevators mark the floor below the ground floor with a "B" for basement, "G" for garage, "S" for sub-basement, and I even saw one where it was marked -1 to denote what position to ground level you were going.
At my university they built a deep underground building and the elevator had floors 2 1 G -1 -2 -8 -9 -10 -11. The floors from -3 to -7 were unusable due to wetness in the cracked bedrock.
My late father was a bell hop at two hotels here in Fresno. He worked at the Californian and the Hotel Fresno. It's still hard to think about how long ago that was.
When I visited the UK in 2016, the biggest difference I found was that a large percentage of hotels do not have a lift/elevator. Of course, that could also be due to my habit of picking historic buildings/houses that could have been converted to a hotel from its original usage.
I was in London a few years ago and I made sure to get a hotel with a/c. My sister in law didn’t think that was necessary as Britain didn’t get hot but we were forever grateful for it when we experienced the HOTTEST DAY EVER in Britain during our stay (over 100 degrees f). The hotel, a Marriott, with one of their “top rooms” (thanks to my brother’s Marriott status when he booked it for us), was soooo tiny. Two queen size beds pushed together and about a foot of space around the beds. We didn’t complain. But it was an eye opener. I’d stay there again in a heartbeat.
Yeh many think it doesn’t get hot enough in the U.K for air con but i can certainly say during our summers it can get really hot. Even my cousin who came over from Australia in 2018 when we had a really good long summer was shocked at how warm it got.
When we vacationed in London we bought an adapter. First morning I used the adapter and my hair dryer I blew the fuse in the WHOLE hotel!! Our hotel did not have AC but all rooms had oscillating fans. In August we only needed to use them at night.
Since you brought it up, I love the “Jeeves and Wooster” series with Hugh Laurie and Steven Fry! ❤
The hotel complimentary breakfasts are quite different. In the USA you go to the breakfast room of your (insert name of chain) inn and you obtain coffee from a pump pot. You equip yourself with a disposable plate and plastic utensils and opt for the steam table contents--usually reconstituted dry scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, perhaps biscuits and gravy. You'll also have a few cereals, some fresh fruit, some yogurts and pastries, and the delightful make-yoru-own waffle iron (or in HoJo, the pancake machine). In the UK, the utensils and plates and coffee cups are genuine certamic and metal--the coffee comes out of a machine that offers flat white or latte or mocha or others--the food is made fresh for the steam table and includes beans and mushrooms and if you're lucky blood sausage.
All in all I like the waffle maker and coffee in the US better, but Britain has us beat on every other point.
I stayed in a B&B in the Mayfair section of London. There was a full English breakfast each morning. It was quite good.
I had Afternoon Tea at Harrod's rather than at one of the more posh London hotels as I had neglected to make a reservation in time. I rather enjoyed it.
I developed a taste for milk and sugar in my tea, Devonshire cream with scones, and British style bacon (rashers?).
@@MichaelScheele Those are good times! We enjoyed a B&B in Stratford-Upon-Avon where I got some more Shakespeare for me, and yes, that full -fast was memorable. The high point for me was Tadcaster, Yorkshire, where we stayed at the B&B that's run by the Samuel Smith Brewery. Good food to start the day, then go to the Angel and White Horse and drink my way carefully through the entire menu of Smith's. And the Crowne Plaza Heathrow had a breakfast buffet with all imaginable fry-up components. All with real ceramic plates and flatware and coffee mugs. Much more civilized, don't you think?
In the US I like to stay at the Embassy Suites and they have a full breakfast with omelets to order. They also use real dishes.
Difference for me:
Breakfast is free in the US.
Breakfast in Britain was split between full meals and continental. I chose continental at 6 in the morning. Dry cereal (two choices), one type of pastry, milk in open jug, some very sad looking fruit, and a £40 bill.
Breakfast in Scotland was included. First day they served a plate full of lots of things. When done they asked what we liked and served our individual preferences to each of us for the remaining 3-4 days. No variety, but at least we liked what was served.
@@noylj1 Interesting. I don't recall ever paying for breakfast in England, and I stayed in several B&Bs and also several chain hotels. At every place I could get a pretty complete fry-up at no additional cost.
Over on the continent I found I needed to pay extra for breakfast--but it was always a very good one (Barcelona was spectacular) and in France the free brekkie was continental style, which I unde3rstand is how those Parisians all like to start the day.
I guess my choices of English lodgings were either lucky or inspired.
Just came back from London for the first time. The biggest differences i noted were as follows
- outlets all had a switch next to them to turn them on and off
- the hotel room lights wouldn’t go on unless I stuck my keycard in a slot next to the door and left it there
- the bed didn’t have two sheets, just one covering the mattress and you slept under the cover with nothing else. Here we use two sheets
- the sheet covering the mattress wasn’t a fitted sheet
- all toilets had two buttons for one and two
- the outlets in the bathroom were different from normal outlets. I guess razors have a different type of plug in the UK.
I have the two buttons on the toilets in my house... we purchased them at Home Depot (in the states) when fixing up an old house. These days it's mainly an efficiency thing. You don't need a ton of water to wash down #1 vs. #2. :) We've had them for about 10 years now and they've been great... smaller water bill.
By law only outlets for razors are allowed in British bathrooms
@@pedanticradiator1491 Haven’t you chaps ever heard of Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters (GFCI)?!?
@@johnp139 Exactly! Keep forgetting that name for the pop outs? In US are required in Apt. Kitchens as well as baths. Also have they heard of auto shut-off light switches or sensors near the doors. And our laws are so different? What about Exits laws...
not using fitted sheets is common in US hotels as well.
The place you walk in is a "Lobby". Some elevators will have a 1, and others an "L". On rare occasions a "G". But inevitably it's actually usually CALLED a Lobby. This may change if some rooms are located elsewhere on that floor (vs. other services). In that case " First" or "Ground" might be used in other parts of the Floor, and only the entrance, check in, etc will be the Lobby. On very rare occasions, the land outside may not be level and the hotel may have multiple entrances, and they may be L1 and L2 (or G and L). There may also be underground levels as B1, B2, etc., also called P1 , P2, etc if its underground parking.
And don't forget about hotels, office buildings or theatres with M for the Mezzanine level (partial floor/ open air above lobby)!
@Lost in the Pond - Completely irrelevant to this installment, but just having had a brief back-N-forth about pies [fruit based. And given your previous new-found pies you've tried here in the States, video]. There is another pie you must try... I cannot stress enough why this is a must-try pie = Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. I'm pretty confident you know of Rhubarb (and that it's a vegetable that is very sour). The combination of the two is amazing. This is something your wife know (since she's the real baker in the family... hehehee), Strawberry Rhubarb Pie has a very short window in which it can be made, fresh. Rhubarb season in just a bit before Strawberry season. It is truly a once a year opportunity (fresh...frozen berries and rhubarb [hard to find] will do, but frozen...) to make a pie.
In Australia we follow the UK system of floor naming for the most part. However so many modern buildings have entrances on different levels if they are built on hills. I have been in buildings before that have Lower Ground (LG), Ground (G) and Upper Ground (UG) floors in the one building. So I think the US system is superior and some Australian buildings (like the one I live in) do use it.
I'm an American living in Hong Kong and of British ancestry. I love your channel as I deal with much of this when my English vocabulary has changed to from living here.
when i was 15 i went to Austria (as an idiot Iowan) and was absolutely shocked that there were no screens in the windows. also they called the bathrooms water closets and they drank their sodas without ice. maybe one day i'll get to visit England.. but until then i'm stuck in small town america watching these videos. (thanks for the education! 😉)
your delivery of this information and your affect whilst delivering absolutely slays me - hilarious!!
Ground floor (G) vs. first floor (1) vs. Lobby (L) can be confusing in the US, too--I think that's why most public buildings put a star next to the floor you can walk out of the building from (..out from which you can walk...?)
That's especially for blind people when they use elevators. Helps the rest of us out too.
Is it legalese also for required fire exit? My guess but it seems hotels don't care much.
@@lorirarich1875 in Canada it is CODE the floor to exit the building is MARKED on the keypad usually with a star
When visiting London in 2009 we stayed at the Royal Horseguards. The room was smaller than most we’ve stayed in here and the narrow bathtub felt like being inside a torpedo. Other than that it was very nice and for our purposes a great location. It’s a lovely hotel.
It has been 25 years since I was in England but the hotel most clearly remembered is The University Arms in Cambridge. It was LOVELY and so was the staff. The biggest difference is that it was unlike any other hotel I've visited either in the US or any other country. Here we have cheap, middling & "sell your car to pay for one night here" qualities. Within each category, they are pretty much interchangeable- as though they came from Lego kits. In England there seemed to be much more individuality.
Many modern electronics are dual voltage, but you definitely need to check on the electrical label.
I learned recently that UK video games on old consoles like SNES etc. ran slower than US video games due to the Hz difference.
I think the size of the room depends more on whether it's in the city or out of the city.
Some rooms in upscale hotels in midtown Manhattan (New York) are little bigger than a coffin.
Regarding the size of British hotel rooms Iv stayed in several different size room. Some small, some larger. It tends to be dependant of the price of the room & the poshness of the hotel. Meaning pay more for larger rooms in some hotels. Also spa hotels can have slightly larger rooms than budget hotels.
Thank you, I needed a smile today! 😊🇺🇸❤️🇬🇧
I love British dry humor!!! You make me smile the whole video!
I remember staying in a delightful old hotel in Glenridding, in the Lake District when I was a child. I recall that the building was so old that the floor sloped which I thought was a hoot. There was one shared bathroom at the end of the floor. Even the cheapest and oldest hotels in the US have private bathrooms. The only exceptions I can think of are a few bed and breakfasts. It didn't bother me back then, but I'm afraid it would now.
Hmm. I had a house in Alabama with the same kind of slope in the back room. I later realized that room had been a back porch that had been enclosed to made a den.
Many older hotels here had common baths Plumbing was very expensive.
Shared bathrooms are now rare in the UK
stayed in a 10 or so floor 100 year old hotel down town Seattle that had shared bathrooms
I stayed in a terrible hotel in downtown Los Angeles in the ‘80’s that had a common bathroom at the end of the hall “Yuk!”
Wouldn’t do it today!
One of the biggest hotel rooms I ever had was in Carlisle, Cumbria. Room was ridiculously large. But I’ve also had UK hotel rooms where I had to get out of bed at the bottom of the bed and could barely turn in the shower (in London). Best places to stay in the UK are in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide. I hope to go back this summer and will use that to pick my lodgings.
Which hotel in Carlisle did you stay at? I used to live near Carlisle so am just curious
@@pedanticradiator1491 I had to look at Maps to figure it out. This was 12 years ago, but I think it was the County Hotel. Not positive, but pretty sure.
@@pepintheshort7913 OK
The best thing I remember from staying in London was the electric tea kettle and shortbread cookies resupplied daily for my room and turn down service. After a full day of walking I could come back and chill with tea and cookies.
Biscuits.
the notion of not having a kettle in the room is basically heresey to the brits and most europeans.
I commonly use the word Porter at the airport for the person who assist you outside with your bags or the person who might transport someone needing assistance in getting to the gate.
In London when we asked for salad dressing we were given mayonnaise. They had nothing like vinaigrette or blue cheese 😞
The numbering of floors is important to know if you travel with someone who cannot climb stairs and there is no elevator. We booked a room on the “first floor” and then found out that required climbing a full flight of stairs.
I think that is a peculiarity of where you ate. I’ve had thousands of salads in the UK, and while I know they have a mayo-like dressing called salad cream, I’ve never actually been given it on a salad. I’ve usually been given some kind of vinaigrette, but also Caesar, various Asian-style dressings, and for shrimp salads Marie Rose, which is like a shrimp Louis ie like thousand island.
We have lots of salad dressings in the UK, and, unless you order a salad that has a specific named dressing already on it, it will usually come with vinaigrette already on it.
We don't have Ranch, but we definitely have things like blus cheese and vinaigrette - were you eating in a pub?
I know Americans tend to eat in touristy pubs in London and then complain that the food is bad.
If you eat in pubs in the tourist parts of London, you WILL get rubbish food.
Unless the pub you go to in the centre of London advertises itself as a 'gastro-pub', it will be somewhere that sells cheap food to tourists.
Pubs aren't restaurants, they are somewhere most Brits go to for a quick bite when they are out and about. If we go out for a meal, we go to a proper restaurant - there's a world of difference.
Unless you want fish and chips - then you need to go to a fish and chip shop - anything else just isn't real fish and chips.
We were eating in a hotel and it was even a US brand hotel. I guess we just ate in the wrong dining room. Thanks for your replies
Not sure why American's find this a strange concept , you walk into a hotel on the ground , hence ground floor you then go up a level thus first floor, very simple really.
@@markbradley7323 Hotel in the US have hotel rooms on the same floor as the reception/lobby area. , which would be the first floor and the next floor would be the second floor.
Speaking of hotel rooms, I flew to London in 2007 and I stayed in a tiny hotel room with a single bed. I had never seen a single bed in a hotel room, nor a room that small. I was also very surprised at the tiny bathroom and shower. I think a really big person might have a problem getting into the tiny shower. It reminded me of a shower in an older travel trailer.
Can we talk about how every hotel bathroom in Britain seems to have heated towel racks? It was heaven!
Thats a radiator! They just happen to be useful for drying/warming things, we usually dry our clothes on them in the winter :D
@@KFC_Pyongyang_AssistantManager lmao! If we have radiators in the bathroom in Canada they are usually the same kind as the radiators in the rest of the house, they don’t double as towel racks…well, I suppose they could but it’s just not the same!😊 I think it’s fair to say that in Canada most people here have central air natural gas furnaces or electricity, not many people have boilers anymore here.
@@clarissathompson pretty much everyone here has boilers. If not they will probably have a fireplace, but usually people with a fireplace also have a boiler (like me) :)
@@KFC_Pyongyang_AssistantManager ya, you usually will find homes that still have boilers on the West coast in Canada, they have a similar climate to England, but for those of us in the mountains or, especially, out in the prairies it’s just too cold for a boiler to efficiently heat a home. They don’t provide much comfort when it’s -20C outside. Where I live rarely gets much colder than -12C so you can still see older homes with boilers, especially Victorian era homes but people often also install electric base board heat to supplement it. Wood heat though, there’s nothing like a roaring fire on a cold damp day❤️
@@clarissathompson i love fireplace, we use it in winter when its very cold its so cozy 💗
funny thing with elavators. we have ground floors. but its for basements essentially. or first floors but they are kinda underground. at south dakota mount rushmore. the ground floor is the first floor for employees while the first floor is the dinner for guests and the 2nd floor is a hydroponic garden for employees
Smallest hotel room we ever stayed in was in Germany. We had to put our sons in the bathtub and my husband and I tried to sleep on what amounted to a twin sized bed(though smaller than an American twin). To be fair we were lucky to find a room at all as our cabbie told us “Slick Villie” was in town and hotels were booked up. (That’s Bill Clinton if you didn’t understand our cabbie’s accent) 🤪
I used to travel annually to London on business. Maybe it was just the hotel where I stayed, but there was no alarm clock in the room. There was, however, a lovely selection of tea and biscuits that was replenished every day. The hotel was owned by a beer company, and two bottles of their beer were also provided daily.
Alarm clocks in hotel rooms are rare in the UK though some TV's do have alarm functions
Not all hotel bathrooms are handicap friendly. Some say they are and when I get to one they have a very low toilet and the tub has no handle bars and the shower chair they have sucks. I've only ever been to two hotels that had bathrooms that were really handicap friendly.
I was in a hotel that advertised that recently and thankfully I don't need that access but I'm a larger person and I could barely fit inside the bathroom by myself, I very much doubt a person could wheel in and transfer to the toilet from the chair. And the shower door only opened 12" wide (I had to go in sideways as did my average size husband lol) and had no seating or tub or anything. No way they could make that work. I hope they had other rooms that were actually ADA compliant.
Can't abide low toilets in handicapped rooms. It's like they were built for pygmies or four year olds.
YOU are HYSTERICAL!!! I would prefer the GROUND floor being called the Ground floor as they do in Britian, makes much more sense! Many times I get on an elevator and never know which floor is the GROUND floor because they have parking beneath the GROUND FLOOR!!!
Thanks for another fun and informative video!
Some of the differences in hotels between the U.S. and the U.K., particularly London is that quite often, the room seems to be an odd shape and beds don't seem to fit logically in the room. For instance, in one hotel we stayed in, the bed was stuffed in the corner of the room partially covering a window. Many of the hotels seem to have been converted from buildings that served another purpose and they just made the best of it and crammed the beds in the room.
The typical breakfasts were different as well. U.S. hotels tend to favor the "Continental" breakfast, whereas in the U.K., the "Full English" was the most common option.
This was all from my experiences visiting London, and with 4 star hotels that were decidedly more affordable than their posh counterparts. So, maybe its not like this in general across the U.K.
Another word that I've commonly heard for sofas that convert to beds is, "Sofabed". This is what I've most commonly heard across the U.S. I grew up mostly in the Mid-Atlantic and the Southwest USA.
The oddest shape I’ve ever seen was in NYC. My sons room was maybe a Z?? It was like they took two broom closets and added a connecting hallway at an angle….. very very strange.
@@bethotoole6569 Maybe it's just down to older buildings being converted to hotel spaces then. I guess I just got 'lucky' in London with odd shaped rooms. Haha! In NYC I ended up staying in hotels like Hilton, where all the rooms were square.
Having said all that, I did really love my time in London and I would LOVE to go back to the UK sometime soon!
No bathrooms in the hotel rooms in London! To be fair, it was an old hotel (The Chelsea). We asked for a room with a bath, and that's exactly what we got - a bathtub. The W.C. was in the hallway along with the shower.
That's quite rare these days in the UK not to have an en suite bathroom
You forgot a big difference that caught me by surprise when I went to the UK - British hotels don't provide you with washcloths! This was no small quirky hotel we were staying in - it was a luxury hotel. Very weird. I had to buy some from a local shop.
It's not weird, they aren't washcloths, they're flannels, and not widely used in the uk, they are for faces, not bodies. I use them to take my makeup off as an alternative to makeup wipes, to save on waste.
I'm afraid the way I was raised you would be considered dirty for not washing with the washcloth from top to bottom I often ask men when I date them whether they use a washcloth if they don't I consider them lazy and dirty and I think no wonder their underarms stink I tell a man to bathe from top to bottom with a washcloth or else forget about being with me.
Also my parents were of fairly recent European extract well father about two generations ago came from Swedish and German mother german-russian grandmother still made her own soap the DNA revealed a lot of Scottish Lily white with blue eyes the whole family.
@@juliaw151How do you wash your face then? Just soap/cleanser and water?
@@katherinetutschek4757 I bring my own? lmao
I’ve only stayed in Alderly Edge/Cheshire so this could be isolated, but also noticed there’s no king sized bed, it was just 2 beds smushed together with a large comforter; and even though there’s no air conditioning you can at least open the windows which is nice b/c most all US hotels don’t
Huh? I don't remember but i'm sure they do down the Pacific coast and San Diego, at least where i have been to. They do in Canada 🇨🇦
Many hotels in the US don’t want their windows to open for 2 reasons.
1. For safety reasons, to keep out “undesirables” from preying on guests.
2. For fire (and insurance) reasons to prevent the spread of flames. It also helps maintain adequate heating/cooling costs for the motel.
I have stayed in very tiny British hotels, but while in Edinburgh I stayed in a hotel that was about 3/4 the size of my row house. The bathroom was bigger than my kitchen!
I've experienced the same thing... The three London hotels were teeny-tiny but the one in Edinburgh was similar in size to a US hotel room
Room size can vary quite a lot within the same hotel. I once stayed in an Edwardian hotel in Bournemouth where I could almost span the width of the room with my outstretched arms while a friend on the same floor was in a double room that easily 5 times the size. I figured my room had once been either a servants room or that floor's linen closet.
My experience in UK hotels is that they charge more for everything. The big one was being charged “per person per night” where in the US hotels seem cheaper, off more and typically don’t charge extra when 2 are spending the night
Per person per night is rare now
Las Vegas?
While this is less common now when I first went to England 40 some years ago, geysers supplying hotwater in the bath, or even slightly more terrifying electric shower water heaters in the shower with you. The other thing that is different is that is still possible to using the British term en suite to describe a full bathroom as part of your room that not all rooms are en suite. I have often stayed in smaller cities away from London were you do need to check this when renting a room for the night.
Oh the joys of sharing the bathroom with everyone on that floor!!
I found that in Belgium too…. Actually everywhere I went in Europe had similar issues:)
Geysers?
@@bethotoole6569 its far less common than it was in England though often in older hotels even if you have one it often is a former closet.
It’s been some time, but all the hotels I’ve used in the UK had the rooms numbered sequentially, with no regard to the floor. On our last trip, room “15” turned out to be on the 5th floor.
You weren’t kidding about the differences in hotels. I stayed at the Saint Giles hotel in London in a 2005. My God, was I shocked when I went into a single room there. A single bed and not much space. And the toilet. It reminded me of my college dorm room in the United States not, a hotel room.
In my hop around England I ended up back at the Saint Giles hotel later in my stay over there. This time I was in a regular size room with two beds. Again, both of them singles not queens or whatever. And a small sitting room and a toilet. And, I will say I froze my ass off. Middle of winter and I was freezing.
I am from Minnesota, I know cold brutal weather but, I could not believe how cold I was over there.
In more of the American hotel chains that were over there like the best western that I stayed at, the beds and rooms seem to be more Americanized. Although, at that same hotel when you left you pulled the key out of a wall socket and it automatically turned off all the lights. Now that, was completely bizarre to me. But very interesting
The lights in the room did not work if you didn’t put your key in this device. It had the hotel key on one end, and a plastic device for going into the wall for the lights on the other end.
Also, that whole shower thing I’m so grateful I didn’t fall out of it all wet and soaked up. There were many times, I thought I was going to do just that.
The keycard in the slot to turn on the electricity is not a bad idea. It saves energy as many people can’t be arsed to turn off the lights when they leave the room and it is next to the door which means you see it when you leave so there is less chance of leaving without it. You do have to make sure the sockets are still able to be used to charge up any devices you don’t take with you of course but otherwise it’s not a bad idea. It’s a bit strange to see one fastened to a conventional key though.
The room may have had a steam/radiator heat system that is adjusted by opening and closing a valve. Not to say that would actually work though.
@@egpx It's usually just a low-tech solution, being a chunk of regular plastic used as a large key tag which when pushed into the slot is just pushing on a momentary switch which stays on until you remove the tag. You can therefore shove anything in there the right thickness to hold the switch closed. Very useful for keeping the room cool/warm if you're out for a while where it has individual room temperature control (or for charging items as you say).
If you were so cold why didn't you speak to the hotel staff and either get the heating checked or get a portable heater, pretty dumb not to do something about it. Room sizes in London generally reflect on the general demands on space in London, age of the hotel and in most cases the cheaper the hotel the smaller the rooms tend to be.
0:28 - Canada is barely 4 hours away and Mexico is just a little over 20 so you could add two more countries over a weekend for the price of gas/indigestion.
Well, my 107 year old house in east Texas has separate taps for hot and cold for the tub.
My mom's ten year old home does too. That's not unusual for bath taps at all. But in the UK they have that on sink taps sometimes and it's shit.
@@lavenderoh oh I have them on every tap in the house but he mentioned the tub so that’s what I said….. 😅
@@damantx1 107 yrs is old for the u.s. , my local pub is from the 1500s .
Ours is from 1475 but it still has an outdoor toliet so if you are dissatisfied with single taps maybe don't visit.
My homes in CT (from the 50’s) had separate taps for faucets and tubs
The marriage proposal line is literally top 5 funniest things I've heard this year 😂😂
The first time I stepped out of a British bathtub I felt like I was Alice in Wonderland, falling and falling. The ground was so far away.
At least you’d be able to have a decent bath. Every American hotel I’ve ever stayed in which includes a ‘bathtub’ basically has a shallow tray that can only hold enough water to wet your arse and maybe your feet too.
@@egpx who wants to soak their behind where God knows who did what?
@@gemoftheocean I don’t. I do like a nice soak in the bath though and those small baths you get in some hotels don’t allow it and seem pretty pointless to me. Maybe you could bath your young kids in one but a thirteen stone (!) bloke like me doesn’t fit!
Whenever I watch cash Jordan real estate videos and he mentions the "full bathtub" they are always so shallow! They wouldn't cover my nib nabs!
On our honeymoon in London we were assigned a hotel room in a quite posh neighbourhood that was big enough for us or our luggage but not both. Also we had no hot water. The room cost >$300/ night decades ago. My generally soft-spoken husband went down to the lobby and demanded a better room. We got a slightly larger one with room to lay out our luggage and a functional shower. But the breakfast was nice as was the pub next door where we rested after our days outings
I have been known to press the button to stay on the ground floor/any floor I’m on, but that’s due to absentmindedness.
I used to always push different lower level button just to see where it went, one time it opened the back door to the laundry area🤣, they were shocked and I felt bad for them
One thing I also remember is that public lights in the hallways and stairs could be on a timer switch and therefore not always on. You would have to punch a switch to turn them on to walk up and down the stairways in Europe.