The Ritz has altered its dress code of 100 years to allow guests to wear jeans. But only to breakfast, mind, in the hope that the hotel will "see more bookings", a spokesperson explained. This is the latest proof that when it comes to hotels, all the innovation is taking place around the breakfast table. Until recently the choice was simple: full English or continental. But the first meal of the day has taken centre stage. "Breakfast used to be eggs done three ways. But lately there's been a shift towards more interesting ingredients," says Guy Dimond, food and drink editor at Time Out.

London City at present is considerably one of the most preferred cities to stop at in the entire world. What back packers yearn for in a hotel is absolutely going to be radically different from what a conventional London resident would certainly deem important. Today there are many diverse kinds of hotel accommodation around. As a result you would be instructed to consider at length about what you are searching for in your hotel. This is a very individual opinion & with the variety of options accessible to you right now it can easily be a tough judgement to make.

Thursday, 10 July, 2008 — penglet

"So yesterday I, as my mother delightfully put it, “got to see what the other half live like”. For my Christmas present last year, my older brother gave me a gift voucher for afternoon tea for two at The Ritz. Yesterday was the day I actually used it. I’d bought a lovely summery outfit from a generic Arcadia store, only for it to not actually stop raining at all yesterday. I left home ridiculously early as I know what London Underground is like and made my way to Green Park station to meet my friend, where I changed my flats for stupidly high heels that I could barely walk in. But when we walked into the hotel - oh. My. God. It was the stuff of dreams. Men to open doors for you and apologising profusely if you had to actually touch a door handle yourself, chandliers, dim lighting, the works. We were shown to our table in the Palm Court and the waiter pulled our chairs out for us and put our napkins on our laps. We had the Ritz blend tea, which I can highly recommend. It tasted like, well, tea. But I like tea Once our sterling silver pot of tea had been brought over, a stand was put on our table with finger sandwiches (without crusts, as my friend pointed out excitedly) and pastries. The sandwiches were unfussy and sandwichy. (Have a look here if you actually want to see the menu in detail.) But what got us the most excited was the giant pot of clotted cream for the scones that would be brought out later. We like clotted cream.

Britain’s railways have romantic history. It began with steam trains and blossomed into a golden age of opulent rail travel during the 1930s. The heady romance may have gone from everyday rail travel, but it still lives on in the Orient-Express.

The Orient-Express became an iconic form of travel in the stylish art deco era of the 1930s. It earned a reputation for comfort and luxury for both its sleeper cars and onboard restaurants, which played host to royalty, nobles, diplomats, business people and the bourgeoisie.

The teabag is 100 years old this year, but not everyone is celebrating.

The perforated paper sachet transformed a time-consuming afternoon ritual into a five-second quickie, and saved the tea industry by fulfilling the modern imperative for convenience and instant gratification. But many tea drinkers believe that the invention has also reduced one of the world’s greatest drinks to a beige, tannic concoction that neither refreshes nor satisfies.

Like many inventions, the teabag came about by accident. Struggling to cut costs, Thomas Sullivan, a New York coffee merchant who turned to tea, sent out samples in small silk sachets rather than as loose tea. His penny-pinching was misunderstood by his customers who failed to realise that they were supposed to cut open the sachet and empty its contents into a pot before brewing their tea.

The result was an instant success with American tea drinkers.