Arcadie Montparnasse - Paris, France     

Booked through last minute.com, both flights on BMI Baby and the hotel Arcadie. The hotel is a typical basic Paris hotel ,but if you are looking for a well located place to stay at a good rate this is the hotel for you. The hotel has fairly small rooms and a very small lift but if you are looking for just somewhere to sleep it is adequate and is made better by the excellent and fiendly staff who are very friendly especially if you make just a little effort to try out the basic thank-yous in French - this applies throughout Paris and I think without exception we found the French, helpful, friendly and most welcoming to their city. We found the hotel clean throughout and I would say that much of it has recently been decorated. The location of this hotel couldn't be better as it is about 100 meteres or so from the main Montparnasse main line railway station, the metro station and the airport transfer bus stop (Air France). We used the Air France bus number four from Charles de Gaulle (you don't have to fly Air France to use this service) and the return trip for two of us worked out at around 48 Euros. You probably could do this cheaper but we didn't particularly want to carry suit cases through the metro and train system. It is a bit long winded around the airport as it picks up from a number of parts of the airport after this though just one stop before Montparnasse. One lovely find we did make whilst in the area is in one of the side streets down hill from the hotel - a bar called Night Beach (10 Rue Vandamme, 75014 Paris). A young couple had only opened this a few weeks before we visted and they were really trying to make a go of the business. The work they had carried out on the place was excellent and they were so proud, they spoke fantastic English and even gave us a guided tour. Really worth a visit if you like a chilled out drink after a busy days site seeing. Getting around Paris is simple on the Metro, make sure you buy one of the travel cards (one two or three days) and then you can travel unlimited in the centre of Paris without having to buy tickets each time. Trains are very frequent and reliable and we felt really safe in the underground, probably more so than London! Costs in Paris were expensive especially drinks, this was compounded by a very poor Euro / Pound exchange rate at the time Beer was around ?6 a pint! Food wasn't too bad though as many restaurants had a fixed menu for quite good rates (around ?10 per head). One tip if you want a good view of Paris with the Eiffel tower in the view is to go to the top of the Montparnasse tower - 58 stories (about eight Euros) as the Eiffel tower is right in front of you in the view. If you go up the Eiffel tower it can be up to three hours to queue and once you are up there you can't see the number one Paris attraction! Paris really is special and very much worth the visit.

This is a lovely hotel. My room was spacious and clean and the bathroom was huge. the breakfast was good, if a little simple and the staff were extremely helpfull and friendly. The hotel is an excelent base from which to explore the city of Paris as it is only a very short work from Montparnasse Bienvenue station which has access to most of the metro lines that run through paris meaning you have little oppertunity to get lost. Right oposite the hotel is another Metro stop called Gaite for those of you who cannot walk 5 mins to Montparnasse. the only complaint I have about this hotel is that the windows are full sized (doors practically) and so you do feel slightly worried at night leaving them open, which as it was winter was not a problem as it would have been too cold anyway but in summer this may affect you. Also our windows looked out onto a street full of sex shows and porn video stores which no one warned us about. however we never experienced any problems due to this, there were no drunk loud noisy men etc. all in all a great hotel for the price and I would recommend it to people who want to see Paris on a budget.