Comfort Hotel Saint Martin - Paris, France 

Big disappointment
Posted: Thu, Oct 14 2004
These are some of the smallest hotel rooms in Paris; the two separate beds have a gap of like a millimeter between them--and yet...the new bathrooms in every room work great and are clean as could be (us Americans and our bathrooms, you know). The all-u-can-eat breakfast in the cellar was v. good and kept us going to lunch time, and saved us money on a meal (yogurt, cheese, lots of croissants which were from France's answer to Costco, but we wolfed 'em down.) Our room faced an airshaft with rather a lot of pigeons, and it was hard to regulate the temperature between too warm and too cold (we were there in winter.) This Rue de Gustave Goublier is a bit hard to find, but it is dead close to Gare de l'Est while, at the same time, not being really in the rougher neighborhood right next to the station...there is a theater district right around the corner, so there's foot traffic until 11--later at night, you'd probably want to keep your eyes open.This area's on the way up. The two arches commemorating the ego of Louis XIV are like a block away; there's a ton of patisseries and (I know, I'm being a barbaric Yank again) a Monoprix, to bring wine and cookies back to the room; if you walk over near to Rue de Chateau d'eau there's a fine chocolatier, and Metro stops all over the place. But now I'm reviewing Paris instead of the hotel. Despite what the brochures boast, it's about a 15 minute walk to the Canal St. Martin (as seen in Amelie, for what it's worth) but it's worth the trip. The point is that the neighborhood's still an fertile mix of immigrants, young people and fancy if decaying buildings (there's a passage over here, too, that's full of Indian restaurants; exotic's not the word for it.)The Relais: cheap, basic, clean, crowded, and the management was fine; oddly, I found no trouble communicating (remember that "bonjour monsieur/madame"); I suspect the Chunnel has made for a rise in the English-speaking in the local waiters, shopkeepers, et cet. We're from near San Francisco, where the ambient rudeness and expense makes Paris a very easy to adapt-to place--let's all perpetuate the myth of French snobbery, so it'll keep the wrong people from going there!

For the Value oriented person
Posted: Tue, Jul 13 2004
These are some of the smallest hotel rooms in Paris; the two separate beds have a gap of like a millimeter between them--and yet...the new bathrooms in every room work great and are clean as could be (us Americans and our bathrooms, you know). The all-u-can-eat breakfast in the cellar was v. good and kept us going to lunch time, and saved us money on a meal (yogurt, cheese, lots of croissants which were from France's answer to Costco, but we wolfed 'em down.) Our room faced an airshaft with rather a lot of pigeons, and it was hard to regulate the temperature between too warm and too cold (we were there in winter.) This Rue de Gustave Goublier is a bit hard to find, but it is dead close to Gare de l'Est while, at the same time, not being really in the rougher neighborhood right next to the station...there is a theater district right around the corner, so there's foot traffic until 11--later at night, you'd probably want to keep your eyes open.This area's on the way up. The two arches commemorating the ego of Louis XIV are like a block away; there's a ton of patisseries and (I know, I'm being a barbaric Yank again) a Monoprix, to bring wine and cookies back to the room; if you walk over near to Rue de Chateau d'eau there's a fine chocolatier, and Metro stops all over the place. But now I'm reviewing Paris instead of the hotel. Despite what the brochures boast, it's about a 15 minute walk to the Canal St. Martin (as seen in Amelie, for what it's worth) but it's worth the trip. The point is that the neighborhood's still an fertile mix of immigrants, young people and fancy if decaying buildings (there's a passage over here, too, that's full of Indian restaurants; exotic's not the word for it.)The Relais: cheap, basic, clean, crowded, and the management was fine; oddly, I found no trouble communicating (remember that "bonjour monsieur/madame"); I suspect the Chunnel has made for a rise in the English-speaking in the local waiters, shopkeepers, et cet. We're from near San Francisco, where the ambient rudeness and expense makes Paris a very easy to adapt-to place--let's all perpetuate the myth of French snobbery, so it'll keep the wrong people from going there!