Travelling through France to northern Spain we decided to spend a night at the medieval city of Carcassonne in the Languedoc area.

First Impressions

From a distance the walled city looked stunning, but to be perfectly honest that was the best bit. For those of you that have visited and enjoyed your stay I will apologise now but we absolutely hated it, if I had wanted a theme park I would have gone to Disneyland! The city was full of the most horrendous ‘tat’ gift shops selling everything from fake suits of armour to tee-shirts with knights on them and really awful ‘attractions’ (I use this word loosely) such as the haunted manor and weapon museum.

It was a little better at night when the shops had closed and the restaurants opened, however, teenagers staying around the city became very bored, got very drunk and succeeded in annoying practically everybody right into the small hours.

I digress, the purpose of this review is to warn of the hotel and not the place itself!

Parking

The Hotel Le Donjon Les Ramparts is situated within the city walls, so we made sure we checked on parking facilities for which we were quoted 10 Euros per night. It wasn’t until we arrived that we were informed that we could only take our cars in after 10.30pm at night and had to remove them before eight in the morning. We left ours outside the walls of the city!

Check In

On arrival we followed directions to the hotel only to find that it was split into three parts and reception was in another building a five/ten minute walk away (not good, it was 90 degrees and the city was heaving with people). We eventually found reception and checked in only to find that our room was …… you guessed it back in the first building we visited. Begrudgingly we made our way back across the city, dodging ‘sword sellers’ on the way.

Rooms

The building itself looked ‘ok’ I can’t really describe it any other way, it was a square building with grey walls but on entering it was actually very well set out. Stone floors and stairs, interesting antiques and very clean so I was quite looking forward seeing the rooms. Well I was disappointed. The rooms pictured on the Best Western website looked nothing like ours. I can only imagine that they are executive rooms and not standard ones. While ‘grumpy’s’ room had been recently refurbished ours looked like something from the Crossroads Motel. (Old midlands soap opera).
It was shabby! The furniture had seen better days, the walls could have done with a lick of paint and you had to run around to get wet in the shower. ‘Grumpy’s’, on the other hand, was freshly painted with crisp white bedding and a new shower. They both had tea and coffee making facilities, fridges and flat screen TV’s but certainly were not worth the £150.00 per room per night rate. I know you pay for location but I did expect a little luxury. Some toiletries, other that a small bar of soap, would have been a nice touch.

Food

We didn’t bother with breakfast, it was 12 Euros and served in the main building but there were plenty of restaurants around offering better deals.

Extras

Looking at the list of amenities I did note that you could have a massage and also you could go jogging around the city with a coach! Can’t see how in that heat and you would constantly be dodging tourists, knights and drunken teenagers!

I am afraid that I did not take any pictures of the hotel, I was too tired and hot to look for the camera, but I have added a couple of the nicer parts of the city.

Recommend?

Would I recommend this hotel? No, it’s too expensive for your average 3 star hotel. Maybe the other part of the hotel was better, had we have stayed more than one night I think I would have asked to see the other rooms and facilities. Even the bar was in one of the other buildings, you do feel really cut off in the annex.

Final Word

Yes I agree this is a bit of a depressing review, I can’t go into anymore detail as we were fairly desperate to get out of the city and the hotel. If you do want to visit I would suggest staying outside the walls as I am sure there are better deals to be had elsewhere and when the crowds get too much you can get away for some peace.

Address: 2 Rue Du Comte Roger, Cite Medievale, Carcassonne, FR 11000

Jean X