by Dee Delaney

Created on: May 09, 2010

Hotel Paris Bruxelles is a small, typically Parisian hotel with 36 rooms. The cramped foyer has a receptionist sitting behind the desk all day and all night, and steep staircases take you up to a maze of poorly lit corridors with tatty carpets and anonymous brown bedroom doors. The overwhelming impression is of somewhere that is rundown and past its best.

~~Location~~

The location of the hotel is its greatest strength. Situated in the heart of Paris, it is about 2 minutes walk away from the Republic metro. The Gare du Nord is about 15-20 minutes walk away and the Gare de l'Est was slightly closer.

The Pompidou Centre is about 30 minutes walk, and the Sacre Coeur is about 40 minutes away. Although this was not problematic, it is a far cry from the website, which boasts being "a stone's throw from the Pompidou Centre. Even Lastminute.com advertises it as "a few steps away from the Pompidou Centre". It is, however, a convenient hotel for somebody just getting off the Eurostar or arriving at the Gare du Nord late at night.

~~Arrival~~
We arrived at about 10pm, and were welcomed by the receptionist. He spoke only French, but this was not a problem as we are fairly fluent. He gave us our key but did not show us to our room. There was a small lift available for us to get our cases up the 2 flights of stairs.

~~The Room~~
In the interests of economy, we took a quad room. This contained two large double beds, which meant that my horrified teenage boys had to share. Each of the beds had a wall light at either side, but only two of these wall lights worked.

Furniture in the room was sparse, with a small built in wardrobe and a desk. A lot of our possessions ended up on the greasy and stained carpet, which was a bit unpleasant.

The en-suite was one of the smallest I have seen; if somebody had opened the door when I was sitting on the loo I would certainly have lost my kneecaps. The shower unit was adequate, the flow was powerful and the water was hot. The only problem was getting out of the cubical, when I realised that it had a strange hidden leak, and that I was paddling around in 2 inches of water. This happened every time one of us had a shower, and we eventually started to remember not to leave any clothing on the floor, or we would find it floating around.

Soap and shampoo were not provided. There were towels for 2 people rather than 4. A hairdryer was provided, but didn't work.

A small TV was mounted on the wall, but we could only access 3 channels, unsurprisingly

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