Best Western? Worst Western is more like it, though it pains me to say it. Do yourself a favor and don’t even consider this place. Here’s why: I stayed at the Best Western Burns in Kensington for two nights in September 2004. The single room was very, very small, but that’s to be expected. (The bathroom was so small, in fact, that they couldn’t fit the hair drier inside. It was fixed to the wall of the main room directly above the desk.) The hotel was an easy, though not entirely obvious, walk from the tube and far enough off of busy Earl’s Court Road not to have the traffic noise. The staff was quite friendly and front rooms overlook a park, which can be quite pleasant at least when screaming children are not in it.
However, my non-smoking room smelled strongly of smoke … or maybe it was dust. Frankly, my sense of smell has deteriorated quite a bit and I have a hard time distinguishing the two. Nonetheless, the odor was strong enough to cause my eyes to burn and give me a headache within 20 minutes of checking in. Other problems - no in-room air conditioning, grease-stained and crumb-filled seats in the breakfast area, an uncomfortably hard mattress that left me with a stiff back each morning, a poisoned “Predator pest control” trap (for mice?) between the bed and the wall just a foot or so below where I lay my head at night, extremely squeaky floorboards both in the halls and in the rooms, minor chipping and pealing of the paint and wall paper, a half-used cake of soap leftover in the shower from a previous guest, and someone else’s nail clippings (yuck!) on the stained, faded, threadbare carpet.
If you want to stay in this general area of London, I’d recommend the Holiday Inn, Hilton Olympia, or Hilton Kensington at Holland Park - the latter of which I checked into when I fled the Burns two days into my five day stay.






