Sweet dreams in the big 3 / London

YOU CAN STILL SEE the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum and the changing of the guard outside Buckingham Palace, but little else has stayed the same in this flush, vibrantly multiethnic, culturally blossoming metropolis. Even last summer’s terrorist bombings didn’t diminish its appeal. Statistics gathered by Visit London, the city’s tourist authority, show that 6% more travelers arrived between July and October last year than in the same period in 2004.

Exchange-rate sticker shock and the high price of food and tourist attractions make London one of the most expensive cities on the planet. Then too the lucrative high end of the hotel market is where most of the action is. Pricey hotels keep opening here. But so do more affordable, unusual places -- Yotels at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, which have high-tech, prefabricated chambers modeled on first-class airline seating, and EasyHotel, a capsule-style inn with bright orange rooms sized small, very small and tiny, for $69 to $89.

But, to me, London wouldn’t be London without its old-fashioned mum-and-dad hotels, generally converted row houses in districts where budget accommodations cluster, such as Bloomsbury and Earls Court.

They persist, said Jamie Talmage, a hotel expert for Visit London, because they are homes, as well as places of business, passed down in families from generation to generation.

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Abbey House

THIS London budget classic has an enviable location, on a quiet square in the Royal Borough of Kensington, near the bustling shops, restaurants, bus stops and Tube station of High Street Kensington. To the west is shaggy, semi-wild Holland Park and, to the east, prim Kensington Gardens, with its palace, Round Pond and recently reopened Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fountain.

Abbey House occupies a dignified, yellow-brick Victorian formerly owned by a bishop and a member of Parliament. Inside, the foyer’s black-and-white tile floor gleams, ceilings soar, wedding-cake plasterwork decorates the walls and the balustraded staircase mounts gracefully to four upper floors.

Beyond that, the place is unlikely to suit upper-crust tastes. It has no elevator or air conditioning. Abbey House’s 16 rooms are neat and clean but could have been decorated by pretentious Hyacinth Bucket of the BBC sitcom “Keeping Up Appearances.” They have TVs and sinks but no phones. Shared showers and toilets are in the hall.

Several years ago, I recommended a room there to friends with a toddler, and they loved it.

Abbey House, 11 Vicarage Gate, Kensington; 011-44-207-727-2594, www.abbeyhousekensington.com. Doubles from $130, including full English breakfast and taxes; larger rooms that sleep three to four from $158.

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Mayflower Hotel

THE Mayflower occupies one of the almost identical white-porticoed row houses of Earls Court, about a 10-minute walk west of the Victoria & Albert Museum. The Earls Court neighborhood has a pleasing, up-and-coming air, as well as pedestrian shopping passageways, small ethnic restaurants and its own namesake Tube stop.

The hotel opened two years ago after a thorough conversion that gave the building a cool first-floor juice bar, smooth stone floors, a reception desk framed by a huge wooden carving from Jaipur, India, and 47 rooms. Tending toward small but stylish, the rooms have high ceilings, Egyptian cotton sheets, Internet access, wide-screen TVs, marble baths and decor accents from the subcontinent.

Mayflower Hotel, 26-28 Trebovir Road, Earls Court; 011-44-207-370-0991, www.mayflowerhotel.co.uk. Doubles from $149, including breakfast and taxes.

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Pavilion Hotel

SUSSEX Gardens, another enclave of budget hostelries near Paddington Station, stretches somewhat monotonously between Hyde Park and Regent’s Park. From the sidewalk, everything looks respectably buttoned-up.

But once you open the door at the Pavilion Hotel, you’re in a netherworld where Dickens’ Miss Havisham meets “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” The walls are chockablock with portraits of unidentified dignitaries, sconces and heavy fabrics in leopard print and Oriental silk. The reception room has an air of dissipation, crammed with fainting couches, armchairs and leather sofas, pillows, footstools, fringed lamps, tassels, ceramic figurines, ashtrays, fake Roman busts, old sketches and photos.

The Pavilion, hip and gleefully over the top, is owned by former model Danny Karne and his sister Noshi, an interior designer. They aren’t white-gloved hoteliers. Several years ago, a Times Travel section story from a reader detailed alleged ill treatment at the Pavilion, including the hotel’s refusal to reimburse her for the cost of a night’s stay she had reserved but didn’t take. There followed an insulting rejoinder from the management -- said later, when the incident was dissected, to have been Danny’s girlfriend.

The Pavilion’s guestbook is full of star signatures, such as supermodel Naomi Campbell and Jarvis Cocker, frontman for British band Pulp. But it may not be for families or the AARP crowd. When I arrived, an impromptu morning-after-the-debauch party was going on in the lobby.

“Are you drunk as well?” one guest asked me, cracking open an airplane mini of vodka.

Themed chambers at the Pavilion include the Enter the Dragon, the ‘70s tribute Honky Tonk Afro and Better Red Than Dead, an opera in crimson, claret and vermilion. All have private baths, satellite TV and phones but tend to be cramped, with fantastical beds occupying most of the floor space. There is no elevator.

Pavilion Hotel, 34-36 Sussex Gardens, Sussex Gardens; 011-44-207-262-0905, www.pavilionhoteluk.com. Doubles from $175, including breakfast and taxes (credit card transactions 4% higher).

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Portobello Gold

THIS is a friendly Notting Hill spot known for its excellent selection of wines by the glass. Like many English pubs, it has rooms above the bar, but the ones at this little place are far more cheerful, comfy and well-maintained than at others.

All eight chambers -- from the spacious, four-poster honeymoon suite to the twin-bedded backpacker room -- are shipshape, with attached baths, telephones, television and wireless Internet access. A top-floor flat sleeps six, boasting a fish tank and private terrace with putting green. But the best buys are the four doubles on the third floor. They are decorated in warm yellows and beiges and have inviting duvets and big windows overlooking the back.

The neighborhood, full of small junk and specialty shops, is where Hugh Grant fell for Julia Roberts in the 1999 movie “Notting Hill.” Saturday mornings bring the famous Portobello Road thrift market to the pub’s front door and, in late August, the wild Notting Hill Carnival passes by.

Portobello Gold, 95/97 Portobello Road, Notting Hill; 011-44-207-460-4910, www.portobellogold.com. Doubles from $123, including breakfast and taxes.

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Premier Travel Inn

THE Premier Travel Inn London County Hall is part of the city’s biggest budget hotel chain. It occupies the former quarters of the Greater London Council and has 313 spotless, utilitarian, cookie-cutter rooms with built-in furnishings and practical carpets aligned along endless blank halls. Downstairs, a restaurant, bar and lobby are decorated with all the charm of an emergency-room waiting area.

But what you get for your money at the London County Hall is a reliable place to stay in one of the city’s best locations. The hotel is across the street from Waterloo Station, with its Tube, train and Eurostar stations, and underneath the London Eye, the city’s giant Ferris wheel.

The 443-foot wheel, the Tate Modern and nearby Millennium pedestrian bridge over the river have helped smarten up the South Bank neighborhood, which is also home to Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal National Theater, Royal Festival Hall, Hayward Gallery and London Aquarium, which is right inside the County Hall complex.

Premier Travel Inn London County Hall, Belvedere Road, South Bank; 011-44-870-238-3300, www.premiertravelinn.com. Doubles $161, including taxes.

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St. Margaret’s Hotel

THE Marazzi family opened St. Margaret’s Hotel as a boardinghouse about 50 years ago. Ever since, Marazzis have lived and worked there, keeping the paint fresh and the poached eggs at breakfast perfectly cooked. Current proprietors Rosanna and Tino mean to keep it in the family. As a result, pride of place and thoughtfulness show at the 60-room hotel in four venerable Georgian row houses on Bedford Place in Bloomsbury.

The hotel isn’t fancy. It doesn’t have an elevator, the furniture in the first-floor sitting rooms is a little dated and only nine rooms have private baths. But everything else is just as you would want it -- clean, neat, comfortable and in working order. The rooms are reached by steep staircases and a maze of corridors. Some have antique wardrobes, bureaus and the occasional armchair.

Whenever I stay here -- and I often do -- I think of a line from “A Room of One’s Own,” by Virginia Woolf, a onetime Bloomsbury resident, about a chamber like those at St. Margaret’s, “with a window looking across people’s hats and vans and motor-cars to other windows.”

St. Margaret’s Hotel, 26 Bedford Place, Bloomsbury; 011-44-207-636-4277, www.stmargaretshotel.co.uk. Doubles with private bath from $166, including breakfast and taxes; doubles with shared bath $118.