With only a few hours of sleep after my overnight Philly to London flight, I was at brunch trying to get on London time. While waiting for my food, my eyes scanned the crowded restaurant as the rain steadily fell outside. With a good mix of couples, families and girlfriends, the tables were full of laughter, food and lots of wine – everything felt right except the popcorn.

The restaurant has a partial open kitchen space with clear glass (the other walls are full of colorful art and murals) and I noticed the bins of popcorn on top of the shelf.  Since it is too early to start stinging popcorn for holiday decorations, I looked at the menu to see if there was a weird popcorn theme (there wasn’t) s0 I was really perplexed (it would be about an hour later when I connected the (popcorn) dots).

Ok, I didn’t figure it out until i saw the boxes of salted and sweet popcorn lined up for the Sunday Film Club movie in the hotel screening room.

In all the years that I’ve stayed at Firmdale hotels with screening rooms, I’ve never taken advantage of this really cool hotel amenity either due to schedule or movie choice (I may have already seen it in the U.S.).  With the all day rain outside, this was a perfect day for the movies, especially one that you could essentially attend in your slippers. When I checked in, I inquired about the movie and was told that there was space available and to proceed to the restaurant about ten minutes early to meet the group coordinator.

As a hotel guest, I was able to attend for free (awesome hotel amenity!) and made my way downstairs before the others to explore the space (you do need to check first that there are available seats as they do sell out). As this is a high design hotel, this theme continues in the screening room – a room of orange seats with a blue one here and there. I felt like Hollywood royalty in this private, plush screening room. The popcorn mystery solved, a table salted and sweet was ready for guests enjoyment (I was too full of brunch to partake in the popcorn tasting – sorry blog research).

A Film Club ticket includes a meal with a drink in the restaurant which is a great deal in my opinion for a date or group outing . Firmdale has three hotels in London and one in New York City with a screening room showing first rate films.  Guests are led downstairs to the basement screening room as a  group by a coordinator who ensures that all guests are present before the movie starts.

Today’s movie would be “About Time”, a UK film that hadn’t opened in the US yet (it has now, on November 1st).  This charming film stars Rachel McAdams, Domhnall Gleeson and Bill Nighy about a man who can time travel and does so in funny, romantic and sentimental ways.  It asks the question “what would you change, if you could go back in time” – would you make a fool of yourself in that situation, would you take two, three (ten) more passes at the perfect moment, experience, day?  While Rachel McAdams is always popcorn cute in the rom-com, the film centers around the father/son relationship of Gleeson and Nighy.

While watching the film, I was reminded of my favorite UK film, “Love Actually” partly because of Nighy but mostly because of how the film was a feel good British comedy with a strong family center and a good music score  (I later learned that it was written by the creator of “Love Actually”). The film has a two hour running time.

I had a hard time leaving the screening room once the film ended, I wanted to see another film – my own rainy day mini film festival. It was such a lovely space to see a movie – good sound quality, comfortable seats and popcorn – who could blame me for wanting to stay longer on the rainy London day?

So, a private screening room is a very awesome hotel amenity, what are your favorite hotel amenities?  Anything unusual and fun?