Another year, another Christmas party, this time in an enormous marquee at Embankment Gardens in London. I’ve been wearing black tie so much recently that I’m beginning to feel like a waiter.

Matthew prepares for his first day at Vesuvio’s Restaurant

The party was pretty much your typical big corporate Christmas event, and was actually one of the better Christmas parties I’ve been to, but the entire night was overshadowed by the fact that we came out to witness a serious assault as we waited for our taxi. Basically, it was drunken partygoer vs. homeless guy, with drunken partygoer being pushed over and cracking his head open.

So instead of a nice, leisurely start to Saturday morning, we were woken up early by a Detective Constable wanting to interview us about the events of the previous evening. No doubt the staff at the Sheraton were not too impressed to see the boys in blue turn up at the door just a week after the whole Litvinenko polonium scare, thinking to themselves that another suite would be out of commission for a month!

Our witness statements prepared and our civic duty done, we decided to head out into Belgravia for some shopping. A block from Sloane Square (one of the most affluent parts of London), we came across this:

Not what you want to wake up to…

Canterbury may not be paradise, but there’s not a bone in my body that misses living in London.

I had some time to kill in the evening before dinner, so I took the opportunity to take a couple of photos of the area around my office. Many of the buildings here are part of the Norman Foster-designed More London complex. Here is the official website.

A view of Tower Bridge and London’s City Hall at sunset

The Ernst & Young headquarters building on More London Place

Ernst & Young headquarters building, as seen from the embankment

London’s City Hall

The Tower of London, as seen from the South Bank

Buildings on More London Place

Buildings on More London Place

Tower Bridge at sunset

I’ve got a training course tomorrow morning that they’ve insisted on starting at 8:30am, which is too early for the first train. It’s a mixed blessing, though — it means I can grab a drink with Jerome tonight, and it means that I get a chance to stay in the brand new Hilton next to my office which just opened this week.

My first impressions are that it’s a great property — very well located, with a modern interior style that feels a little like a ‘W’ without the pretention. If you’ve ever stayed at the Hilton Trafalgar, you’d feel right at home here. They’re very much cut from the same cloth, and I think that my sentiment is shifting: I think that Hilton have created a better “mass boutique” hotel than Starwood.

The Hilton opens onto both Tooley Street and More London Place. This is the Tooley Street entrance.

The More London Place entrance

My room on the 8th floor

Main lobby and bar area

More private lounge area off the main lounge

I think the hotel looks great inside — they’ve got the decor just right, and it feels modern without feeling overdesigned. But then I would say that — apparently, I’m one of a whole generation that spends too much time in hotels, therefore idealising the principles of design and recreating them at home. The Invasion of the Suites maintains that relentless business travel has turned hotel chic into an ideal, says The Times.