Room temperature

LONDON — Friday, Feb. 17 — Booking rooms in private homes in London is one way to cut high hotel costs, but the rewards go beyond saving money.

My room in the home of Lee Bender, a greeting card artist who lives in the swanky Holland Park neighborhood, is down the hall from a giant brick oven, a pottery kiln built in 1863 when this neighborhood was known as "The Potteries."

Back then, it was one of the poorest neighborhoods in London, and the tall bottle-shaped kiln that is now Bender's dining room is one of the last remaining, everything surrounding it, including the rest of her two-story home, having been remodeled, renovated, or torn down in the name of progress.

Lee Bender lives in a neighborhood called Hippodrome Mews. Mews were stables, and hippo is greek for horses, a reminder that this area was once a racecourse.

Today it's a village-like residential area adjoining Notting Hill of Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant fame. It reminds me a little of Queen Anne in Seattle, close enough to the heart of downtown, but a neighborhood unto its own with organic butcher shop, French bistro, wine bars, a bookstore, a produce seller and a cozy "gastro pub" called the Castle where the menu is heavy on gourmet specialties such as the Moroccan chicken sandwich with roasted peppers on ciabatta bread I had for lunch.

My single room ($87) is small, but has a private bathroom and comes with breakfast. It takes three keys to get into the house - one for the outside gate and two for the front door - not counting the key to my room. There are some disadvantages. It's about a 10-minute walk to the nearest Underground station, but all in all, I'd much rather be sleeping here in a quiet neighborhood with no traffic noise and lots of restaurants and shops that cater to locals than in a cramped, over-priced hotel around Victoria Station.

Not many of the guidebooks list resources for booking private accommodations. I booked mine through London Home to Home (www.londonhometohome.com). Two other agencies with good reputations are At Home in London www.athomeinlondon.co.uk) and Uptown Reservations (www.uptownres.co.uk). Another good resource is the London Bed and Breakfast and Homestay Organization, an umbrella agency that sets standards for privately-run B&Bs. Its Web site is www.bbha.org.uk.

Still smoking

Be prepared to breathe a lot of cigarette smoke if you visit London. The non-smoking movement that's resulted in bans of varioius sorts in Ireland, Italy and Spain doesn't seem to have caught on here.

A few pubs and restaurants have non-smoking tables or small non-smoking areas, but smoking is still generally accepted. Some pubs ban smoking at the bar, maybe out of consideration for the bartenders.