Alexandrie - Paris, France     

I was in Paris for three nights. Booked first at a three star (Duminy Vendome) for EUR 180. They ended up overbooked and sent me to a Mercure, right by the Printemps dept store. Second night I stayed with friends. Third night, I went to Alexandrie, booked at EUR 75. I typically try to stay at three star places such as Castex, for about EUR 120 and I was not too sure what to expect for such a low rate. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that Alexandrie is well worth the money, and next time, if I can't find a reasonable place in the EUR 110-130 range, I may well come back. Sure it's basic, but it's clean, bathroom is OK, and once I found how to turn it on (which unfortunately only happened almost in the morning..) the air conditioning actually did work. Location is actually not bad either.

We got a great price for this hotel (cheaper than what they quote on their website) and so decided to stay for 4 nights. It is right near Gare de Lyon Station so it made navigating through Paris by metro and RER very very easy (but we did a lot of walking too). The location is near the Bastille and it is about a 10 minute walk to the Marais district so it is in a pretty good location. There are places to eat around the area which were decent but you could also go elsewhere (like the Marais district which has great eats). The room was nice - not huge but had a nice size bed, tv, air conditioning (which was broken while we were there but it was not hot outside so we didnt mind), and a nice bathroom. The lobby has a vending machine if you want a snack, and they do serve breakfast at an extra cost per day which we never had so I cannot comment on it. The front desk staff were helpful although we had a couple of incidents where we would come back to the hotel at the end of the day, ask for the key (which you needed to leave with the front desk every time you left the hotel), and they couldn't find it. Minutes later, they would find the key in such weird places (once a guy pulled it out of his pant pocket, once a maid had it even though it was really late in the day). So kind of strange but overall they were very pleasant to deal with. We really enjoyed paris and our stay at this hotel as it had everything we needed. For what we paid, it was a fantastic value.