Trianon Hotel, Tours

...the street outside the Hotel Trianon was pay and display but only for certain hours during the day and not on holidays and Sundays. This made our parking free for the whole time we were there instead of the €32 it would have cost us otherwise.

PRICES:

The hotel has various rooms available for different prices. We went for the double with shower but shared toilet which cost €55 per night. A single room with shower and ...
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The Hotel Trianon is not a luxury hotel but it was great for us. It had everything we needed and was fairly comfortable. The owner was lovely and the room had everything we needed. We both slept really well (apart from the fact that it was very hot). The breakfast was not worth the money at all but the hotel seemed to be a fairly standard price in general. If you want anything more than a standard hotel you do have to pay a fairly hefty ... more

Mr Tart and myself recently went to the Loire Valley for a short chateaux tour. We wanted to stay somewhere that would be in the middle so that we could get easy access to all the many chateaux that I wanted to see so we settled on Tours as our base. We trawled through a few review sites and eventually settled on the Hotel Trianon.

LOCATION:

The hotel is located at 57 Avenue Grammont. The street is one of the main roads through Tours and is therefore fairly easy to find. The hotel is about a 15 minute walk to the old town which is where the main restaurant and tourist areas are but this was easy enough. There were also plenty of restaurants and amenities on the same street so you don’t need to go into the old town if you don’t want to (although it is worth the walk). The main advantage we found with the location of this hotel was that there was parking outside on the street. The hotel had a parking garage but it cost €8 per night. The hotels in the old town area don’t have the option of parking on the street outside so unless you use a car park a little way away you have to pay for the garage. The parking on the street outside the Hotel Trianon was pay and display but only for certain hours during the day and not on holidays and Sundays. This made our parking free for the whole time we were there instead of the €32 it would have cost us otherwise.

PRICES:

The hotel has various rooms available for different prices. We went for the double with shower but shared toilet which cost €55 per night. A single room with shower and shared toilet costs €45. The other rooms available are a double with shower and toilet (€65), double with bath/shower and toilet (€65), twin with shower and toilet (€70) and family room (€75). The prices change depending on the number of people in the room. The hotel prices are comparable to similar hotels in the area (I know, I looked at a lot before we booked!!). I don’t think it’s that cheap but it seems to be about standard and you really seem to have to pay through the nose to get anything more than 2 stars in France.

THE EXPERIENCE:

We booked the hotel online and were sent a confirmation after phoning with credit card details. We were sent details of how to get into the hotel after the reception was closed as we were due to arrive in Tours late.

We arrived late on the Friday night. The instructions for getting the keys were simple enough and we got into the room fine. Our room was in the basement floor although it was at the back of the building which was obviously on a slope as weren’t underground. The room was quite small, but had everything in it. It was plainly decorated with white walls and a couple of pictures and a ‘delightful’ orange checked bedspread! There was a dressing table, a narrow chest of drawers and a bedside table on one side. There was no wardrobe but there were some hangers and a couple of hooks. There was a flat screen TV but we didn’t even turn it on so I can’t say what channels it received. The bed had a sheet, blanket and the bedspread and there was a spare blanket in the room as well. There is no air-conditioning in the hotel which made it very hot to sleep in the night. The windows open fully but I didn’t feel comfortable opening ours fully as it was only one story up. There was a fan in the room, one of the tall floor fans, which had a timer on which was great for getting to sleep at night.

The bed was pretty comfortable. It wasn’t luxury by any means but it was absolutely fine for us. It was quite hard but I prefer supportive beds as does Mr Tart as he gets back problems. There was only one pillow each which some people I know would not find enough. It was fine for me as I only ever sleep on one but know that my Dad sleeps on about 3 to help his snoring!

The bathroom was again, ‘cosy’! There was a sink with a mirror over it and a shower. The shower was not powerful but it did the job. The water was hot but it did keep changing temperature so try not to shower at the same time as everyone else! They provided soap and a shower gel/shampoo. There was a dispenser in the shower for shower gel but this was empty (although it didn’t matter as there were little bottles instead). They provided towels although only one big one and two small ones so we had to share the big one for our shower (I’m sure they would have put another one in if we’d asked but we kept forgetting to!). The towels weren’t exactly of the fluffy variety but they dried which was pretty much what I was looking for. The toilet was a couple of doors down the hall from our room. The only thing that annoyed me about the toilet was that it didn’t have a sink in so you had to get back to the room before you could wash your hands, but this wasn’t the biggest problem.

On the first day we decided to have breakfast in the hotel. I told Mr Tart that this would be a good idea as we could then take a bread roll for our lunch as well. We came down on the first night to be greeted by a woman (I’m guessing she was the owner’s mother but could be wrong) who asked if we wanted breakfast. She then asked whether we wanted tea or coffee. Then she said she was going to get the bread…..10 minutes later she reappeared. I’m not sure that they have that many people who have breakfast there. There were about 8 tables but only one was laid and they clearly hadn’t got the breakfast there ready. We were given tea and coffee, a glass of juice and a basket with four pieces of French bread and two croissants. There were some packets of jam and nutella on the table. The breakfast was fine but for €7.50 each it just wasn’t worth it. There just wasn’t enough food to make it worth that. We didn’t even use any of the bread for our lunch as there was no cheese or anything to make a sandwich. Needless to say we didn’t have the breakfast again and I certainly wouldn’t recommend having this.

The owner of the hotel was absolutely lovely. He was very friendly and was really helpful when we asked if there was anywhere good to eat. He gave us a few recommendations and drew where they were for us on a map. Every time we came in or left he would stop just to say ‘have a good day’ or ‘how was your day today’. I was really impressed by his customer service.

The hotel does also have free wifi if you want it and there is lots of information about the various things to see around the Loire Valley in the reception.

CONCLUSION:

The Hotel Trianon is not a luxury hotel but it was great for us. It had everything we needed and was fairly comfortable. The owner was lovely and the room had everything we needed. We both slept really well (apart from the fact that it was very hot). The breakfast was not worth the money at all but the hotel seemed to be a fairly standard price in general. If you want anything more than a standard hotel you do have to pay a fairly hefty price for it. I think in the future I would stay in a little village somewhere which would probably have nicer rooms and be cheaper but for our purposes for this holiday this was fine. I’m giving it four stars because it pretty much does what it says on the tin, it loses one for the breakfast.
 

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