Our holiday apartments and student flats are situated in gleaming white, classically inspired Victorian converted buildings, full of character and charm. Positioned in the heart of London, a minute’s walk from Hyde Park and Kensington Palace, developed by William and Mary in the 17th century and home to the late Princess of Hearts, Diana. Across the park, within walking distance, you will find the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum as well as the Albert Hall. A short bus ride down the road from there is Knightsbridge and Harrods. The holiday apartments are also in walking distance of Notting Hill Gate, made infamous by Richard Curtis’ film and famed for the fabulous flea market on Portobello Road, which is always bustling with people ruffling through the antiques and vintage clothes. On route you will come across Westbourne Grove, a part of our district full of designer shops and cafes.

Queensway is around the corner, a colourful, busy place boasting an array of restaurants reflecting a diverse population.  At the bottom end of which you will find Whiteleys, once the biggest covered shopping centre in the world and where Eliza Doolittle was sent ‘to be attired’ in ‘Pygmalion’. William Whiteley advertised that his shopping centre would “execute forthwith any order that comes along” and were duly tested by the public, one asking for a pint of fleas, another an elephant – both were supplied! William Whiteley was shot by a man claiming to be his illegitimate son and eventually the department store was closed in 1981 but has reopened as a wonderful shopping centre, food hall and cinema complex.

Off Queensway on Moscow Road is the Cathedral of St Sophia (Greek Orthodox) designed by John Oldrid Scott in 1877-82, one of the most beautiful churches in London and worth having a peek inside. Fabulous festivities take place at the church on Greek Easter at midnight, so pencil that in your diary too!

Where Leinster Terrace (where our office is!) corners with the Bayswater Road, No100 is where Sir James Barrie wrote Peter Pan!

On a more morbid note, the traffic island where Edgware Road meets Marble Arch marks the site of the Tyburn gallows, the principal place of public execution 1388-1783. At 8 Hyde Park Place is the Tyburn Convent where an order of nuns perpetuate the memory of the Catholic martyrs.

And a little background… Bayswater is so called after Bayswater Rivulet, a stream once used to supply the City of London with fresh water from the River Westbourne until 1795 (it’s now covered up). Water, however, is still seen today with the Serpentine and the Italian Fountains in Hype Park, once the place of St. Agnes Well, a holy watering place known “to cure all evils of the eye” in medieval times.