One man's boutique...

Tomorrow, I'm going along to the 'Internet of Things' summit, which starts first thing, meaning that I need to stay in London tonight. And since the room costs the same whether there's one or two of us in in it, I was delighted when the Minx was able to come along, too. 

She regularly books our tickets, which take us from Chroley to Manchester and thence to London, often getting us both there first class for less than it costs me to go standard on my own. (This is a combination of astute purchasing and also buying the tickets in advance. I usually buy mine the day before.*)

On this occasion, though, the outbound journey was via Preston, a feature neither of us noticed when we collected the tickets. With hindsight, perhaps I should have paid more attention to the significant fact that the train to Preston left Chorley at the time on our tickets but the Manchester one did not!

When we did notice, which was once we were on board the train, we had a frenzied check on the Tramline app to see if we could get back to Preston in time for the London connection but it was fruitless. And so we sat, feeling tense, on the train into Manchester, wondering what would happen.

And what did happen was that the Virgin train manager was absolutely lovely and said that we could use our tickets on the train from Manchester to Euston and that, furthermore, we could still go first class. Hooray!

So it was, then, that we had an enjoyable journey south, drinking wine and eating Virgin's rather tasty deli plates before disembarking and walking about a mile to the Villa Fitzrovial on Hanson Street. From the outside it was unprepossessing and once we'd texted to tell George we were there, he let us in and led us through a short hall, out of a back door, and down some steps into a small yard. Our studio room was at the far end. (Not that it was very far!)

The room was fine - better than fine - but the little yard was lovely. We popped out to a nearby Tesco Express to buy some wine and coffee for the morning and then sat outside in the warm evening air. It was perfect.

It you look on TripAdvisor, though, you'll find that it's not everyone's cup of tea. But I think that's a consequence of being bold and uncompromising in what you do; some people are going to be thrilled and love it yet others are going to feel otherwise!

*Because busy clients do cancel meetings. Not often but it can be expensive when they do!