aderona2018
Google
Definitely a great location and excellent staff. I mean, it's a struggle not to give a full 5 stars, and it was close. I had changed and added another night and Sophie was really very helpful and took care of that. I think it was Emad that met us when we arrived and recognized me from the emails. We left our luggage and goodness, were just a two minute walk from the Louvre, the metro 1 at Place Colette and we even hoofed it from there to the Eiffel Tower (I would not recommend doing that in the rain...it is actually much further than it looks). ||Sophie set me on to City Mapper (like Google and apple maps) as she uses it and it gives train times, if something is running later, and even suggests which car to get onto on the metro or train. And because the metro is just a minute away, and with Sophie's instructions, we got the Ile de France app where we could very easily buy tickets. Once we did that, we were off to Cirque du Soleil, changing from metro to train and purchased return tickets through the app. We even did it to go to the airport (13e! Ireland needs to learn from France when it comes to public transport).||The hotel itself, being very well positioned, is clean and the breakfast is great. There isn't a huge place for breakfast, nor is it needed. It's still spacious and you get a nice spread of sausages and eggs, fresh and hard boiled eggs, loads of cheese choices and some fruits and such. The smoked salmon with scrambled eggs and cucumber plus baguette was my choice both mornings. It was good quality and straight forward. There is a water dispenser with chilled flat and sparkling water (great for filling up the water bottles for the day) and the coffee is a machine, nespresso, with a good range.||We had the junior suite, as a treat for ourselves, and that's where there's a star knocked off, and I really don't mean this in a bad way. It's just how it was. There was a very distinctive odour mainly in the hall, kind of like a sewage or salty-seaside smell, which wasn't present in the bathroom or the bedroom. We mentioned it on the day we were leaving and Sophie jumped right on to it and was to have someone look into it. It wasn't a huge deal, just felt like a pipe might have opened up, or just the way the building was. Besides that, the room was very clean and the bed was super comfortable, something unusual for hotels I find. We had a great sleep both nights. The balcony is very small, or a better word is, quaint. Very Parisian and just nice to sit out (or stand out because it had been very wet, and cold, but great for a brisk morning wake up with coffee in hand). The view over the rooftops was lovely. It was let down in a slight way in that the room is in the apex and the sides, rafters, come up so that if you walked out of the bed on the right side (facing it) you'd easily crack your head. The same way in the toilet. It's hard to describe, but just picture every film set in the smoky old days of London or Paris where the writer with no money gets a room at the very top of the hostel, the corner of the attic. That's what it's like. Quirky and nice a way, but just...not hugely practical. I put a luggage stand on that side so I could bump into it instead of the roof if I got up in the middle of the night (and let's face it, in your 50s, getting up in the middle of the night does happen more often).||All in all, the location + staff made the hotel stupendous. The room itself, junior suite for that price, maybe go for one of the other rooms. It would have been a full 5 star with one of the others. Again, you could not ask for a better, more friendly, more experienced staff and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there. You'll get to any of the most famous hallmarks quite easily from the hotel and it's definitely worth booking a stay.