Rachelle T.
Yelp
I was extremely happy with my stay at Hotel Bastille Speria and I would definitely recommend it to friends! We stayed for 4 nights in July.
Things I loved:
* 1 block away from the Bastille Metro station. Although it's away from the Eiffel Tower and Champs-Elysées, the Metro is much faster than the Tube (London), so it didn't take very long to get from one end to the other.
* Clean rooms, house-kept every day. Cleaner than most hotels in America.
* Good sized hotel room with in-room bathrooms. Ours had separate shower and toilet, making it easy for 2 people to get ready at once. (Rather than the shower and toilet in the same place.)
* Strong air conditioning.
* Free Wi-Fi in the room. Moderate speed, fine for internet surfing.
* Free breakfast - hard boiled eggs, croissants, toast, fruit, coffee, juice. We only had it one morning before venturing to a nearby Boulangerie. It was nice to know it was an option to have if one person wanted coffee while the other person was getting ready.
* Free water! They had a filtered water dispenser available all day which we used to refill our collapsible water bottle we brought. We got a LOT of use of this and it was appreciated!
* In-room refrigerators. We brought back some soda and juice to have in the room since we stayed for several days.
* Front Desk people spoke English and were able to give directions and advice.
* The neighborhood was nice and safe with restaurants and cafes open late. It was nice to come back to the hotel and have a few places to get a drink or a snack.
Things to Consider:
* The Bastille Metro station is huge! Even though the hotel is only a block away, there are several tunnels and sets of stairs you need to walk through to get to the train. Some stations have the train much closer to the entrance stairs, but this one has more walking. This is important if you have luggage! Although this location is close to the Gare de Nord Metro station for the Eurostar (~8 mins), we ended up taking a taxi back to the Eurostar station at Gare de Nord when we were leaving because we had too much luggage to lug around. There are no ramps, escalators, or elevators in the Metro stations.
* The bed is about 2 feet off the ground.
* When you check out and have the hotel watch your luggage for the rest of the day, they just keep it behind the desk, rather than putting it in secure area like other hotels do. This might be because they are currently remodeling their lobby?
* The hotel layout has a lot of rooms facing the inner courtyard and other rooms. A little weird.
* The lights and tv only turn on when a key is stuck in a reader on the wall. I think this saves energy as most people will take the key out when they leave and the lights therefore turn off rather than left on... but I wonder if they can track if you're in the room too.