The Regent Palace Hotel
Arriving at Piccadilly Circus by Air GE, I was pleased to see the RPH was still standing. (I wasn't so sure it would be.) It's the large quadrangular building at upper left in this view, with the intersection at Piccadilly Circus visible at lower right.
Then I thought, OK, the building is still there, but is it still the Regent Palace? So I did a quick search, and what do you know, the hotel has its own website. Yay, it still exists! But then I read the page on the history of the hotel, and I saw that the Regent Palace had in fact closed its doors forever at the end of 2006, and was now threatened with demolition.
*sigh* So that was the end of that. Even if I ever did get the chance to travel to the U.K. again, I now knew I wouldn't have a familiar place to call Home in London anymore. I was sad. I almost felt like an old friend had died...
But I kept reading the history page and noted that the owners are still asking former guests to send them stories and pictures of the RPH. Accordingly, right then and there, I set about trying to track down everything I'd collected over the years that had to do with the Regent Palace so I could share my memories of the place.
(My best pictures are from my 1989 visit, but I can't find anything other than photos from that trip. I know my 1989 RPH paraphernalia is somewhere – I never throw stuff like that away – but I simply cannot find it. Oh well. The post must go on!)
Home Sweet Home!
I ate almost all my suppers in London at the nearby Wimpy Bar. Never mind haute cuisine! (I couldn't afford it, anyway.) ;-)
The view from the front windows of the hotel. The entrance is mere steps from the Piccadilly Circus tube station (at the end of the building on the right), so you could literally be anywhere in London in only a few minutes. Superb location.
I was happy to see the lobby had changed little since 1967. The porter at right later approached me after I took this photo. Evidently there were concerns about people planning terrorist bombings even then.
The pink hallways were still pink! Same carpeting, even. It was dirtier and more worn than before, but everything about the hotel's interior was the same, 22 years after my first visit. Very comforting! The RPH had become a "budget" hotel by 1989, though, so the clientele was knocked down a notch, but I didn't mind at all. I still felt right at home.
The Regent Palace was my first experience with bathrooms that had actual baths! Few rooms had their own toilets and tubs. To do your business and freshen up, you had to use a public bathroom down the hall. It was actually alright! The tubs were huge and immaculate, and a porter would draw your water and set out fresh, warm cotton towels. It was lovely!
My single room! Yes, I made that trip in '89 all by myself. Traveling alone is a lot of fun, actually. You can go anywhere and do anything you want anytime without having to consult anyone else. I'd had enough by then of Mother deciding everywhere we went and when...
If I wanted to spend the evening in my room stuffing my face with Wimpy burgers and watching a program about architecture on Channel 4, nobody was there to stop me! It was heaven, really. I was at my old familiar London home, and I relished every single moment of it.
The room had no bath or toilet, but it did have a sink which came in handy for quick late night pisses. Well I wasn't going to do it out the window! I have more class than that. ;-)
Oh yeah, I almost forgot!
My collection of RPH ephemera doesn't amount to much, after all. A brochure from 1967, key cards from our '67, '69 and '74 trips, the numerals "4" and "3" that I stole from the door of our room in 1969 (I was a bit of a klepto when I was a kid), a pack of matches, a plastic single serving butter container (in which I'd carefully packed the ill-gotten "4" and "3"), and the hotel magazine commemorating the recent Invesititure of Charles as Prince of Wales. Ah, one last pic, why not – here's Mom and Me in Room 843 with the same magazine there on the bed!
So now you've toured my Palace. Next you'll visit my Castle! ^
