Acanthe, Boulogne-Billancourt

That we were going to be in Paris at all had come as a surprise; a nice one though. Any visit to Paris is OK by me. This time is was my beloved wife who had made the arrangements, without telling me anything about it. There was good reason for this. It was as an early birthday present to mark one of those major milestones in life, the one that tells you that retirement is big on the agenda.

Early because it didn't actually mark the ...
...a little more consideration he could have arranged the Genesis Live in Paris concert to coincide but there you are; these big stars don't think about these things I suppose. As it happens, had he done so we couldn't even have attended anyway as we have other plans for then!

This tour date was being held in the Park des Princes stadium situated beside the Peripherique on the south-western corner of Paris, in the Boulogne-Billancourt ... more

That we were going to be in Paris at all had come as a surprise; a nice one though. Any visit to Paris is OK by me. This time is was my beloved wife who had made the arrangements, without telling me anything about it. There was good reason for this. It was as an early birthday present to mark one of those major milestones in life, the one that tells you that retirement is big on the agenda.

Early because it didn't actually mark the big day itself. That was all Phil Collins' faulty. With a little more consideration he could have arranged the Genesis Live in Paris concert to coincide but there you are; these big stars don't think about these things I suppose. As it happens, had he done so we couldn't even have attended anyway as we have other plans for then!

This tour date was being held in the Park des Princes stadium situated beside the Peripherique on the south-western corner of Paris, in the Boulogne-Billancourt district. Whilst it is perfectly feasible to get there and back in a day from where we live in Surrey, even driving, there was no reason to want to do so. After such an event the last thing you want to do is to get back on the road again. So, local accommodation was essential.

A hotel had been reserved for us as a part of the package, which also included a crossing to France on Le Shuttle. The hotel was the Acanthe Quality Hotel on the rond-point (roundabout) Rhin et Danube across which runs the Route da la Reine that leads to the Park des Princes, about a 25 minute stroll away,and then on into Paris. It appeared that it could not have been much more convenient but, in this district would it be any good?

The Acanthe is a hotel in the Choice Hotels Europe chain which includes as well as the Quality brand, the Comfort, Sleep Inn and Clarion groups. I don't know what your impression is when you hear the term Quality used in association with a hotel. From my experience of the Quality chain in the UK, expectations weren't high. Paris is no more reliable than any other major city as far as guaranteed hotel quality is concerned. We've experienced dumps and gems in more or less equal measure over the years.

Getting to the hotel itself was a challenge. Even getting out of Calais in the direction we wanted was. My preferred route is the A16 towards Abbeville and then south into the north of Paris via Beauvais. The slip road onto the A16 at Calais was coned off without any indication of the detour route to get us back to where we wanted to go. Unfortunately that is not unusual on French roads. The French seem to assume that you should have intimate knowledge of wherever you are and should be able to find your own way around such "minor" inconveniences. We ended up going via the A26 and A1 under Charles de Gaulles.

My next mistake was to try to follow the Peripherique anti-clockwise past Stade de France and under the Bois de Boulogne. When we got to the Bois de Boulogne we were unceremoniously thrown off of the Peripherique, which was closed for road works at that section. Once again, find your own way! Finally we got to our destination from entirely the opposite direction to that intended. As it turned out, even if we had managed to continue on on the Peripherique, we later discovered that the exit slip road at Place de la Porte Saint-Cloud was also coned off!

The hotel is right on the roundabout itself, on the south side. In front there is a taxi rank and a small slip road. These are supposed to be kept clear but, following the lead of the French, I dumped our car on the pavement right beside a sign indicating that if you did your car would be towed away! The pavement here is wide so you aren't obstructing anyone and in any case it was only so as to be able to unload our bags. The hotel does have limited parking available but you can't book ahead; it's first come, first served.

The front of the hotel opens directly onto the pavement via two sliding doors. Here immediately you encounter the Reception. The first impression is that the hotel is clean and in good order, with marble being the main decorating material. Checking in was painless; the staff that we dealt with spoke English although both my wife and I can get by in French. The room we were allocated was on the first floor, accessed by lift immediately adjacent to the reception desk or by stairs hidden behind mirror fronted doors opposite, facing the entrance.

The sense of good repair and cleanliness continues in the corridors to the rooms, often a tell-tale point that indicates that all the money has not simply gone into "first impressions". The rooms are entered using an older type digital key, the type with holes in rather than with a magnetic stripe. The key, on entering, has to be inserted into a slot in a box on the wall by the door so as to activate the lights, something often encountered these days. The room was adequately sized, clean and well decorated and furnished. Our room even had a small entrance lobby where was found the wardrobe and the door to the en suite.

Our room even had a pair of full length glass doors opening onto a small balcony beside a rooftop garden. The room was on the inside courtyard rather than facing onto the street and so traffic noise was no problem at all, even with the windows open at night. The double bed was comfortable and warm and we got a very good night's sleep although that may well have been aided by not getting to bed until around 1:30am, having spent some time drinking out on the pavement of the bar next door, talking to other Brits who had attended the concert.

The bathroom had, unusually for France, a bath with a showerhead over it, located on a bracket high enough on the wall to be able to stand under. The French generally just don't get showers. However, true to form though, there was only a very narrow glass screen between that end of the bath and the rest of the room so the water ended up spilling onto the floor! However, in all other respects the bathroom was clean, well maintained and serviceable though the ventilation could have been better.

On the ground floor, beyond reception, the hotel has a small bar and breakfast area that opens onto an open courtyard. We would have breakfasted out there had the weather been better. It would have been a very enjoyable experience I am sure. Breakfast was the usual and completely adequate continental affair.

So, all in all a very pleasant experience and a hotel that I would have no hesitation in recommending, with one exception, and that is if, as we did, you are planning to arrive by car and use the hotel's parking facilities. This presented me with the biggest challenge of the entire holiday. I was offered the final available parking space, with the warning that my car needed to be no higher than 1.5 metres and no longer than 5 metres. I had no idea but, consulting the handbook, it turned out that the car is 1.477 metres high and 4.722 metres long; a tight fit but doable I thought.

The parking is entered from the back of the hotel via a one-way road with parked cars on both sides and through an up-and-over garage door. You are instructed to back in to the garage. Problem one: you arrive outside the garage door and it is shut and there is nowhere to park whilst you ask for it to be opened. The only choice is to abandon the car in the middle of the road whilst you get out and go over to press the intercom button. By this time you have a queue of cars behind you, beeping as only the French can beep. I took the French option and ignored them.

Eventually the door rises and you then have to back into the narrow entrance before the door starts descending again. You are now in darkness and have to start searching for the light switch. The lights are, of course, on timers and will go out, probably before you have sorted out what you have to do next.

Problem two: you are presented with what looks like a series of cages on two levels, each cage containing a vehicle. It turns out that the parking system is an automatic vehicle stacker for 12 vehicles on two levels. You insert a plastic key in a slot in the control panel and when the green button starts flashing, press it. Accompanied by a series of clicking, whirring and clunking noises, the platforms on which the vehicles stand start moving about, a bit like one of those children's puzzles where you have to manoeuvre tiles around a square so as to reveal a picture or to arrange numbers into various orders.

Eventually everything comes to rest and a series of clicks indicate that the door across the front of what is now a vacant platform can be slid open to allow you in. The gap is very tight. With the poor turning circle on my car it took a number of shuffles to back my car into the space. The problem, once you have, is that you can't, from inside the car, see the red lines back and front, between which you must park, in order to ensure that the car is not damaged by the mechanism if it has to be moved. You have to get out and manhandle the car back and forward to fit. Moreover, the spaces were designed with left-hand drive cars in mind so I had to climb over into the passenger seat to get out.

There is space for higher (though not longer) vehicles in the device but the last space is limited because if anyone else wants to get their car out then the final one is dropped into a hole in the ground and all of the others slide across above it. It was with some trepidation that I hoped that they had got their measurements right though, as it turned out, when we left the following morning it was clear that nothing had been moved.

Getting out was also a problem because the garage door cannot be opened from the inside. That has to be done from Reception so you have to dash in to ask for it to be opened and then back to your car in the hopes that, once again, the door hasn't already started closing again. The garage is accessed from within the hotel from the courtyard by the breakfast area.

It is probably better to arrive by public transport and from this point of view the location of the hotel could not be much better. The Boulogne Pont de St-Cloud Metro station at the western end of Line 10 is within spitting distance of the entrance to the hotel. There are also buses whose route passes up and down Route de la Reine. Unless you get one of the hotel's parking spaces you could find alternative parking arrangements around the district a challenge. There seems only to be on-street metered parking available and I saw very few available parking spaces.

There are many restaurants and bars around the district though we didn't eat there on this occasion. The most popular local theme appears to be Japanese. We did drink in the bar next to the hotel but the couldn't even do us any snacks or nibbles at that time of night. It might be better to try the one on the other side of the roundabout.

The website indicates that a Saturday night stay for two people will cost 162 Euros (£110) including breakfast. Parking in their garage costs 10 Euros. I can't tell you how much we paid as it was a part of a package and there was no breakdown of costs. 

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