Base2Stay is a series of hotels: London, Liverpool. We stayed a Saturday night at one, I've forgotten why, on a sketchy edge of Kensington - the potted palms were chained to the pretty marble porch. Sketchy, maybe, but Base2Stay knows what swank is: gorgeous bedding, gleaming bath, equally gleaming European desk attendants, but it's neearly affordable (95 pounds a night - double it to translate to dollars; 65 pounds in Liverpool) because it knows exactly how much swank it is going to dollop on you. Exactly. How much.
As a result, the room was the size of the bed, and climbing over, the view was of the bins and the road, although the road was Kensington-quiet: a fruit shop and the chemist's on the corner, a Mini whizzing by or a Bentley prowling.
In the morning, galumphing in hiking boots and glasses past the impeccable, freshly spritzed, multi-lingual desk attendants. We went for good Italian coffee around the corner in Earl's Court. On the way, there was half a young man lying on the sidewalk, half through someone's garden gate, the bottom edge of his jacket, a plaid shirt, his legs, and pretty good shoes in the path. They were strange to approach. He was lying on his hip - the way you do - so his legs looked like they were walking toward us in a world on a perpendicular plane.
Brian hopped them, which was both delightful and appalling. Delightful, really.
It had been raining lightly, but the sidewalk under him was dry. He was gone when we walked back, but the legs walking were still there.
