The Rosebery by Supercity Aparthotels — Hotel in London

Loved staying here! Trust me, stay here!

Just got home from spending 12 nights here and wanted to write a review to help clarify some USA to UK translations that may help you.

To be clear to the USA people about to read this review, this is an executive apartment, that they call a “hotel”.

Lots of quick details about this place. Not in any particular order. Stayed in executive studio 504 with my wife.

Kitchen = similar to a galley IKEA style kitchen, and does the job. Oven, dishwasher, cooktop, hood, sink, laundry machine, and basic dishes/cooking stuff Dishwasher = small, but we never cooked much. Tea Kettle was SUPER Fast and Nespresso Machine (not a Kuerig) was great! Oven is a microwave/convection oven/ oven combo. “In unit laundry” - OK…..huge issue between USA and Euros. Machine is small and does a GREAT job, but only if you understand how to use it! It is a Washer AND Dryer combination machine. It washed about 2 days worth of jeans, shorts, tee shirts, boxers for ONE PERSON. Took about 3-4 hours PER Load. Uses a TINY amount of water/soap and takes a long time to do BOTH washing and drying for one load. Typical cycle, Warm, cotton, colors, extra rinse and adding a drying time (which isn’t auto dry like the USA) takes about 4 hours. Don’t like to wait? They give you a small drying rack in the room and the wash cycle can still take up to 2 hours. Still have no patience? There are plenty of “wash and fold” services surrounding this location. Bed = UK King/USA QUEEN. Firm Bed, Soft pillows, soft sheets. We are both 6’ tall and slept really well. TV (plural, our room had TWO) - had like 300 BBC local channels. If you want to stream, bring a device with Apps that can Chromecast. Not all American Apps do this in Europe (Hulu does NOT work but Netflix worked GREAT) Kitchen was basically stocked for 4 place settings. If you are going to plan to cook, plan to wash dishes often. AC/Heat = worked great in both modes, but there is a significant delay when switching between heat and cool so be patient. We set it once and it kept the room comfortable for 12 days straight. Bathroom = typical Euro shower, toilet, sink, and a nice towel warmer. Could have easily installed a larger vanity with some counter space, but I see why they didn’t. Ours had 4 small medicine cabinets surrounding a central mirror over the sink. Sitting Area - Small love seat and dining area were nice enough. Windows - two windows open and allow for a semi “cross breeze”. Two layered curtains allowed privacy or blackout layers. Staff - every member of this place was SUPER NICE. Answered all the questions we had and were just generally pleasurable every time, day and night! Housekeeping - they will ONLY empty the bins (the trash) daily included with your rates. They will charge you for every other extra you may desire. Want extra towels? Pay for them. Want them to “make your bed”? Pay for it. Read the following carefully, THEY WILL CHANGE YOUR LINENS ONCE PER WEEK AS THEY STATE ON THEIR WEBSITE. We had NO ISSUES because we knew this up front and hung our towels and made our bed like adults. I heard one “confused” guest yelling about this in the lobby and being quite rude to the night manager.

Ok, now the great parts.

This place is Surrounded by Bus Stops and is a 10 minute walk to Farringdon station. Ex Mouth is 5 minutes away and you are surrounded by London. We got everywhere we needed and always walked less than 10 minutes to get on “mass transit”.

I...

For the reference - we stayed for 53 days, company paid temporary accommodation.

Pros: nice staff good location has gym clean

Cons: WiFi is incredibly terrible. Slow, unstable, sometimes unavailable. Not secure. Impossible to set up Amazon Echo Dot (or any other screen-less WiFi device) without faking its MAC via some other device or calling IT. A friend who was also staying there claims it didn’t work for a whole day. For me it didn’t work for hours. Trash bin in the kitchen is impossible to use. We moved one from the bathroom (which is tiny as well) to the kitchen Fridge can easily be left open if doors are not pressed hard (they are installed in the cupboard). This happens in all rooms I hear There is NO LIGHT SWITCH when you enter the apartment. Our control panel was more than halfway in the apartment. Not really fun to turn on the light on your phone every time you come in the evening to go turn on the light switch Our room which was supposed to have a separate bedroom actually has a sliding glass door between living room and the bedroom. This makes several problems: there is no sound isolation - my partner and I could not work at the same time without both of using headphones non-stop. Especially tricky for the confidential work video calls. Super tricky when one wanted to sleep and other one wanted to work. See next point for more nonsense in that line. The light switch TURNS ALL LIGHTS ON OR OFF. That means, literally, if one wants to sleep, the whole apartment has to be dark. One switch for the whole apartment. Access to bathroom is through the bedroom. That makes even less sense if one wants to sleep and other one wants to work (or do anything else besides sleeping) The sliding doors are VERY HEAVY and noisy, and also they fall out of their sliding patent, so I had to fix them three times. My girlfriend could not do that, and if I was not home, she would be stuck. Bathroom has a shower, not a bathtub like most rooms in the complex have. Also, the shower head is installed at the wall, on about 2.5m height and can not be lowered. My girlfriend cannot reach it. Also, for that reason you can not: turn on the shower without getting wet (for the warm water to arrive, for example) take a shower without having your hair wet unless you use shower cap washing your privates is an acrobatic exercise The switch to turn on/off heating in the bathroom is above the door, making it impossible to reach for short people unless they stand on the chair. And it’s tiny, hidden. No idea why it was made like that. Kitchen is useless for cooking. The electric rings are small and it’s impossible to fit two pots at the same time. There is no wooden spoon provided. We gave up cooking on day three. Provided toaster worked well. It’s noisy and loud. We were on the top floor. Non-stop ambulances and police cars with sirens go through the Rosebery Avenue, several times a day. It’s too warm to sleep, so you have to open the window. Then you have a problem from the previous bullet - it’s super noisy. Also, the duvet is way too thick (and is shared), but that might be a personal preference. Windows can not be fully opened, just the kip, making air flow and draft impossible to achieve. Alarms. There is a weekly alarm testing on Wednesday which is super loud and annoying. But besides that, smoke alarms randomly go off whenever someone fries an egg or burns a toast in the toaster, that happens multiple...

Staff: Desk and Service staff were excellent. 5/5

Shower: Is having half a shower door a UK thing? The first night we used this, water spilled all over the floor so we had to waste time and towels mopping it up. As someone else noted, the only way to avoid this was to run the shower on low speed and crouch under it. Something that was supposed to be relaxing became the biggest annoyance of the entire stay, having to deal with it every single day. If the door is closed, there is no ventilation so the steam causes the entire room and everything in to to be soaked. From 2 above, this means that you always had to shower with the door open so if someone else is trying to sleep, well good luck. For some reason the control of the shower has to be precise when turning it off because if it is twisted by more than 1mm past the invisible and non-marked stopping point, the tub pipe starts to run.

For whoever responded to someone else making the same points suggesting that they should ask for another room and trying to shift blame to the customer - who would actually assume you have other rooms with full shower doors on them? And if this is a recurring complaint, then it's clear that the doors should be fixed. 1/5

Washing Machine: I was pretty excited to have this in the room but it was short lived. The washing seemed to go well. The drying does not exist. After 30 minutes I ended up with a giant pile of wet steamy, smelly clothing. This really angered me especially it was at night. The next day I ended up going to 264 St John Street Launderette nearby and they have self service which costs between 10-20 pounds do wash/dry a huge load. Avoid another useless amenity and just go there. 0/5

Kitchen: Was good to have seating, a couch, oven and dishes. Don't expect too much from the TV, the majority of the channels are not working and you are better off bringing your own chromecast or similar devices. 5/5

Location: Close to a couple of bus stops and 10-15 min walk to Farringdon Station. The ExMouth market is not too far either with a good selection of cuisines to pick from....