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You can still see the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum and the changing of the guard outside Buckingham Palace, but little else has stayed the same in this flush, vibrantly multi-ethnic, culturally blossoming metropolis. Even last summer's terrorist bombings didn't diminish its appeal. Statistics gathered by Visit London, the city's tourist authority, show that 6% more travelers arrived between July and October last year than in the same period in 2004.

Exchange-rate sticker shock and the high price of food and tourist attractions make London one of the most expensive cities on the planet. Then too the lucrative high end of the hotel market is where most of the action is. Pricey hotels keep opening here. But so do more affordable, unusual places — Yotels at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, which have high-tech, prefabricated chambers modeled on first-class airline seating, and EasyHotel, a capsule-style inn with bright orange rooms sized small, very small and tiny, for $69 to $89.

But, to me, London wouldn't be London without its old-fashioned mum-and-dad hotels, generally converted row houses in districts where budget accommodations cluster, such as Bloomsbury and Earls Court.

They persist, said Jamie Talmage, a hotel expert for Visit London, because they are homes, as well as places of business, passed down in families from generation to generation.

Abbey House, 11 Vicarage Gate, Kensington; 011-44-207-727-2594, http://www.abbeyhousekensington.com . Doubles from $130, including full English breakfast and taxes; larger rooms that sleep three to four from $158.

This London budget classic has an enviable location, on a quiet square in the Royal Borough of Kensington, near the bustling shops, restaurants, bus stops and Tube station of High Street Kensington. To the west is shaggy, semi-wild Holland Park and, to the east, prim Kensington Gardens, with its palace, Round Pond and recently reopened Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fountain.

Abbey House occupies a dignified, yellow-brick Victorian formerly owned by a bishop and a member of Parliament. Inside, the foyer's black-and-white tile floor gleams, ceilings soar, wedding-cake plasterwork decorates the walls and the balustraded staircase mounts gracefully to four upper floors.

Beyond that, the place is unlikely to suit upper-crust tastes. It has no elevator or air conditioning. Abbey House's 16 rooms are neat and clean but could have been decorated by pretentious Hyacinth Bucket of the BBC sitcom "Keeping Up Appearances." They have TVs and sinks but no phones. Shared showers and toilets are in the hall.

Several years ago, I recommended a room there to friends with a toddler, and they loved it.

Mayflower Hotel, 26-28 Trebovir Road, Earls Court; 011-44-207-370-0991, http://www.mayflowerhotel.co.uk . Doubles from $149, including breakfast and taxes.

The Mayflower occupies one of the almost identical white-porticoed row houses of Earls Court, about a 10-minute walk west of the Victoria & Albert Museum. The Earls Court neighborhood has a pleasing, up-and-coming air, as well as pedestrian shopping passageways, small ethnic restaurants and its own namesake Tube stop.

The hotel opened two years ago after a thorough conversion that gave the building a cool first-floor juice bar, smooth stone floors, a reception desk framed by a huge wooden carving from Jaipur, India, and 47 rooms. Tending toward small but stylish, the rooms have high ceilings, Egyptian cotton sheets, Internet access, wide-screen TVs, marble baths and décor accents from the subcontinent.

Pavilion Hotel, 34-36 Sussex Gardens, Sussex Gardens; 011-44-207-262-0905, http://www.pavilionhoteluk.com . Doubles from $175, including breakfast and taxes (credit card transactions 4% higher).

Sussex Gardens, another enclave of budget hostelries near Paddington Station, stretches somewhat monotonously between Hyde Park and Regent's Park. From the sidewalk, everything looks respectably buttoned-up.

But once you open the door at the Pavilion Hotel, you're in a netherworld where Dickens' Miss Havisham meets "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." The walls are chockablock with portraits of unidentified dignitaries, sconces and heavy fabrics in leopard print and Oriental silk. The reception room has an air of dissipation, crammed with fainting couches, armchairs and leather sofas, pillows, footstools, fringed lamps, tassels, ceramic figurines, ashtrays, fake Roman busts, old sketches and photos.