London P.S.

Reporting in one last time from London after spending a few days in Seville where $1 buys a good glass of red wine, $70 nets a fine hotel room and tapas are $2 a plate.

Ah… Back to reality. London's pretty far down on the totem pole when it comes to travel values, but I did find one today - the Sunday roast. Every pub offers one on Sunday afternoons, and it's something I've always meant to try, if only I had had the appetite for a big meal at noon. I finally did when I arrived back today after having left Seville at 8 a.m. without breakfast.

Nearly every pub serves a traditional Sunday Roast - usually featuring either roast beef, chicken or lamb - with all the trimmings. I ate mine at a cozy little Hereford pub across from the Gloucester Road Underground station in Kensington.

The meal was a roasted half-chicken cooked with rosemary and served with four vegetables, potatoes and Yorkshire Pudding - all for $16. The waitress was an American from Iowa trying out life in London on a six-month student work visa.

For my last night before heading home to Seattle, I've checked into the Holiday Inn Kensington Forum, 10 minutes on the Tube from Victoria Station on either of two Tube lines in a convenient neighborhood with good restaurants and travelers' services.

I paid $101, including taxes, by bidding for a room on Priceline.com. Mine is in the corner on the 11th floor, so I'm sure it's smaller than some others, but it has all the mod-cons and is a pretty good value in a city where $100 usually doesn't buy much more than a closet.

I walked around today and did a little comparison shopping. The sad truth is that quaint doesn't always equate with value. Tiny doubles in the little Lime Tree Hotel on Ebury Street near Victoria Station, a popular choice among Seattleites, are 100 pounds, for instance - that's $175. They're $80 at the Cherry Court a few streets away, and that's for a shoebox-sized room with a shower barely big enough to turn around in.

The main attraction of the hotels around Ebury is proximity to Victoria Station, but I've always been unenthusiastic about the neighborhood, and today I saw nothing to change my mind.

By the way, things were a mess on the Underground again today.

The Piccadilly Line was shut down for engineering repairs, causing havoc all over town. I arrived at Heathrow expecting to take the line directly to my hotel. Instead, I found out that everyone was being redirected onto an express train to Paddington Station. I know my way around London, so I knew what to do, but I felt sorry for anyone who didn't.

Coming to London soon? Bring lots of cash and a good map.