Hotel Des Mines - Paris, France     

We stayed here for three nights and it was not so good. I will start off by saying our room was clean, which i did appreciate, and the free wi-fi was really the only thing i really liked about the place. Within our first hour of checking in, we lost all electricity. Not sure what happened but we were trying to nap and people kept knocking on the door to see if "we had power". Sigh, not the end of the world. We noticed after washing a few items in the sink that the floor was really wet. We realized we had a pretty significant leak in the back of the sink. We reported it at once and they said someone would come fix it the following day while we were out. In the meantime we had to use all our towels to wrap the leak. When we got back the next day (we left at 7 am and returned at 5 pm, plenty of time, we thought), the leak still was not fixed and part of the sink was sitting in the middle of the bathroom floor! Now it was dirty, it had not been cleaned up, and wet. And we had no towels. Since we were so tired from our days events, we decided to nap and deal with it after some rest. Well, managment knocked on the door and burst in and within minutes we had four people in our room (a very small room) looking in our bathroom. I think the worst part was that i was obviously napping and that the people were so rude. No apologies or anything and even acted as if we hadn't wrapped the leak well enough with our towels! Bizarre. The clincher is that then they said they now know what's wrong with it and they would fix it tomorrow!! What!! The next morning the front desk kept calling to see what time we were leaving our room so they could come fix it, even though we told them the day before we would be out by 10 am. In addition, the guys that worked the front desk in the evening was incredibly rude. He also was not truthful with us several times and he did not want to assist us in any way. We asked for a restaurant recommendation and he said "no" and kept talking. Very, very rude to us on more than one occasion. The woman that worked there, Laurence, was helfpul to us when we needed something and she helped us get to the airport by calling a cab when our shuttle didn't show up. BTW, don't use Parishuttle for airport transfers. They did not show up and charged us anyway and it was one of the worst mornings of my life, we barely made our flight after having to pay 60 euro to get to the airport by cab. Also, don't try to take the RER to the airport if it's during rush hour, it won't work, no room!! And, it's not air conditioned so it is HOT on the RER in the summer time, and a bit smelly, just an FYI. Great sandwiches everywhere! The location was fine--close to public transportation. Montaparnase is a big road right around the corner with lots of restaurants. We travelled all over europe for a few weeks and i have to say, Paris and Hotel Des Mines were my least favorite! Good luck if you stay here!

Hotel Des Mines is a simple but very clean and comfortable 2 star hotel in an excellent location. With this hotel it is actually better to request a FRONT room facing the busy Bld St Michel! Why? Because at night you can close-out ALL the noise thanks to double-glazed windows whilst still enjoying the lovely views across the road of the very French apartments and leafy street. The staff are really good with good English skills. It is only a 15 minute walk to the 'real' Latin Quarter and about the same time to the Notre Dame area. This is not a flash place, but for value it is 'first-class' in our view with simple, clean and quiet facilities. We would go back here anytime. Pisang Ross & Kathy Taylor Perth Australia