To start with there is no such place as Union Nike Apartments. The actual apartment building is called “Westminster”. The location is not the address that was advertised on Hotels.com, which was actually the property management office. Wish I’d known this before the taxi dropped us off with our 70 lbs of baggage! But never mind that - the property was just a 10 min walk away, but after a 10-hour flight, I got an Uber instead.
On to the apartment itself - it is not what they show on the photo. Not even close. Not even the same building as shown in the photos on Hotels.com.
But the area in Southwark is great and the apartment is clean and modern so we try to make the best of it. And then things got funky. Literally.
By day 2, the stench of garbage was so awful that I could barely breathe. I took refuge by sleeping on the living room couch. But the noise from the street below was so loud - I mean I could hear people talking, the traffic light warnings, the buses, the cars, I got no sleep whatsoever. Maybe it would have been less noisy if I’d closed the windows, but it was the hottest day in history in London and the apartment had no fans, no AC, it was smoking hot.
So back to the stench. Turns out there were trash bins sitting directly behind the bedroom windows. It was intolerable.
So I contacted hotels.com to complain and I went to the property management office to demand a relocation. To their credit they moved us to a lovely 2-bdrm in Shoreditch.