Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, I shared the Great British Television Map and the results of the BAFTAs. Tina shared the results of her genealogy work, the story of her great-great-great grandparents who were weavers in Cumbria. Jackie gave us a fun photo of a window shoe display in Birmingham. Sim’s fantasy walk in London took us through a pretty park, along the Strand on the Green, and to a couple of Beatles’ sites. Jean joined British Isles Friday for the first time with a review of Kaleidoscope by Eleanor Farjeon, a book that takes us to the English countryside. Becky reviewed the second book in Anne Perry’s historical mystery series featuring detective William Monk.
When I was researching hotels in London a few months ago, one that I rejected as impractical and probably too expensive stuck in my mind. I’ve recently started having fantasies about staying there. A hotel on a yacht is hard to forget!
The Sunborn Yacht Hotel is docked further east than most of the popular London tourist destinations, on one of the canals in the Docklands. We didn’t get to explore the Docklands area of London when we were there in 2014. I’m intrigued by the idea of using that as a base for our next London trip. We used the Docklands Light Railway on our return trip from Greenwich Observatory and it joined up seamlessly to the London Underground, even easier than it looked like it would on the map.
You don’t have to leave the Docklands to find tourist destinations. The Sunborn Yacht Hotel would be convenient for a visit to the Royal Artillery Museum, which is running an exhibit about World War I until 2018. I had the Museum of London – Docklands on my list for the last trip but we never made it over there. I want to see the exhibits on World War II and on slavery. Then, there’s the Emirates Air Line’s cable car which promises stunning views as it makes its way over the River Thames.
I would want to be very careful about scheduling a time to stay at the Sunborn Yacht Hotel. The rate can go as low as $170 a night for a weeknight in the winter. But it can go up to closer to $600 a night sometimes, presumably when something interesting is going on at the nearby ExCel convention center or the O2 arena. The rates are higher, of course, for river view rooms and for suites. I didn’t bother to convert the price from pounds to dollars for my fantasy room, the Yacht Executive Suite. That would be a relaxing retreat in London with an in-room Jacuzzi and sauna and one unique feature – a private sundeck on the prow of the ship.
I could definitely see myself rearranging those deck chairs to make a comfortable reading nook — the ideal spot for reading Thames: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd.
