When I first booked this trip, I was only going to one match (on a Saturday) and flying home on the Monday. I was leaning toward staying in London instead of Liverpool this time as I hadn’t spent much time there in the last 10 years and I had stayed in Liverpool many times. When I extended the trip to include the Tuesday evening Champions League match and my wife decided to join me for the long weekend, it made sense to spend Friday through Tuesday morning in London before heading up to Liverpool for my last night.

There are quite a few Hyatt options in London, including two different Hyatt Regencys, an Andaz and a new Park Hyatt (which actually didn’t open until the week of our trip). In the end, I decided on the Great Scotland Yard, a Hyatt Unbound Collection property, as it was a similar number of points as the other options, a great location and had availability to use points for our entire four night stay. I used an expiring Category 1-7 free night award to cover one of the nights so I was unable to use a Suite Upgrade Award as Hyatt does not allow Globalists to use both awards on the same stay. The property is a Category 6 and was 25,000 points per night, so while it was a decent use of the free night award, I didn’t maximize it.

I called the hotel from the BA Arrivals Lounge to see if we could check in a bit early and they said they would make a note of our arrival time. I could see in the Hyatt app that we were already upgraded to a King Deluxe room.

The location of the hotel is ideal for first time London visitors, but also great for anyone who wants to be in the thick of Central London. It’s easily walkable to Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, the Palace of Westminster, museums, Westminster Bridge, and many other places. Tube stops and train stations for multiple lines are nearby as well.

We arrived at the Great Scotland Yard (GSY) just before 1pm and were shown to a lovely check-in area where we could sit and go through the check-in formalities. The hotel is very quirky as the building used to be the police headquarters and before that a villa used for visiting Scottish nobles (hence the Scotland Yard name). It’s been beautifully remade into a boutique hotel that has tons of interesting furniture, crime memorabilia and prisoners’ artwork throughout.

Our room was ready so we went up to drop off our things before we headed out. The room had an interesting design. There was a hallway entry with a half bathroom, the main bedroom with a small table and chairs, and a bathroom with a sink and huge shower (but no second toilet). The toilet was also a Toto Japanese toilet.

There was more interesting artwork in the room.

We were on the 5th of 6 floors, but the views weren’t much to see and the windows were small.

We received a welcome amenity when we arrived of some nuts and note from the hotel.

Because my last night was using the free night cert, it seems like the hotel IT systems treated it as a second stay as I received yet another welcome amenity on Monday. The cookies were actually really good and appreciated late that night after a few post-theater pints.

The hotel has a Michelin-starred Scandinavian restaurant called Ekstedt, but we didn’t get a chance to try that. Interestingly, breakfast is served in the same space each morning (called The Yard at breakfast time). As Globalists, we got to order one item from the menu, a coffee or tea beverage and also enjoy the supplemental buffet.

The buffet had lots of fresh bakery items, meats, smoked salmon, cheeses, fruit, juices and spreads.

Here’s a few pictures of what we ordered during our stay. All of the food was excellent.

There are also two bars at the GSY. There’s a regular bar named 40 Elephants, after a famous female criminal gang, which looked very elegant and had lots of memorabilia throughout.

There’s also a speakeasy called Sibin, accessed through a button on a bookshelf across from the main bar.

I grabbed a drink from there when I came back from Liverpool on Saturday night and it was great, although not cheap!

On my last morning, I made it to the gym, which was on the basement level and small, but well-equipped. There was also a Peleton for those who are into that.

We absolutely loved this hotel. It’s probably one of our favorite city hotels we’ve ever stayed in. We will definitely be back at the GSY next time we visit London. If you are worried about the area being crowded, the hotel itself is on a quiet side street, but you will of course run into the crowds as soon as you turn onto nearby Whitehall. The easy walking access to tube stations, Covent Garden, and the theater district makes up for the crowded streets a bit.

Up Next: Frog by Adam Handling Restaurant Review

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