Regetel Yllen Eiffel, Paris

When booking our stay in Paris, I chose this hotel as part of a Eurostar deal. My reason for picking this over others was because it had no terrible reviews on Trip Advisor and in fact none at all on Ciao or Dooyoo, although someone had nominated it. So, I’ve proved that these reviews do influence decisions and here’s what I have to say about Hotel Yllen Eiffel.

Thanks to dodgy directions at Gare du Nord, we circumnavigated Paris in ...
...were sent to was Luxembourg, which, although on the same street, was around 40 minutes walk from The Yllen Eiffel. Having had a delightful chat En Francais with the little old lady at the ice-cream stand about just how long it would take us to get there, I rang Little Brother at home and demanded answers from the internet.

The nearest metro is in fact Voltaires. The quickest way to get to the hotel from Gare Du Nord is to head to ... more

When booking our stay in Paris, I chose this hotel as part of a Eurostar deal. My reason for picking this over others was because it had no terrible reviews on Trip Advisor and in fact none at all on Ciao or Dooyoo, although someone had nominated it. So, I’ve proved that these reviews do influence decisions and here’s what I have to say about Hotel Yllen Eiffel.

Thanks to dodgy directions at Gare du Nord, we circumnavigated Paris in order to find this hotel. The first Metro station we were sent to was Luxembourg, which, although on the same street, was around 40 minutes walk from The Yllen Eiffel. Having had a delightful chat En Francais with the little old lady at the ice-cream stand about just how long it would take us to get there, I rang Little Brother at home and demanded answers from the internet.

The nearest metro is in fact Voltaires. The quickest way to get to the hotel from Gare Du Nord is to head to Montparnasse and take line 12 (dark green) in the direction of Maire D’Issey. As we wearily clomped up the concrete steps with our luggage and through the slamming barriers, the Hotel was a sight for sore eyes. The beauty of this place is it’s proximity to the metro, perfect for sightseeing, returning late at night and arriving and departing with heavy luggage.

From the outside, the hotel looks a little shabby in an authentically Parisienne way, but through the revolving door is a modern interior. They are obviously very proud of the reception area, as it appears in plenty of promotional photos on the internet. Well lit with a small wooden desk, ornate fireplace and mirrored doors leading to the lift and stairs, this is tiny by most standards but adequate for this 40 room boutique hotel. We checked in, beginning the conversation in French to get us off on the right foot but ending in English all round.

Our key was not your standard hotel card key, not was it a heavy old fashioned metal one. Weirdly, it was more like a piece of cardboard with holes stamped in it. Be warned, they guard these keys in a very precious fashion – either they’re expensive to replace or there’s no way of doing so. At one point during our stay, we lost this key and the reaction was not good – the receptionist bared his teeth, asked us repeatedly if we’d left it in the room and had the maid escort us up with the skeleton key. It later turned up in my handbag…. (only after I’d searched the breakfast room and accused The Boyfriend).

You have to leave the key at reception when you go out, which is a bit dubious. On a couple of occasions we came back to the hotel to find that the staff had changed over and a new receptionist we’d never seen at the desk. Under these circumstances, all we had to do was say the room number and we were given our key. I felt this lacked any security and although hesitant to hand our key in, I did so because I was more worried about losing it.

Our room at first glance appeared to be dark and narrow with the bed against the wall and a desk jammed up against the window. After the champagne consumed on the Eurostar, we were temporarily panicked when we thought there was no bathroom. The strange layout meant that the bathroom door was hidden behind the door to the room, so when one was open, the other was rendered invisible like some sort of Crystal Maze challenge. Once we drew back the curtains, the room filled with light and seemed bigger than most Paris hotel rooms, which are notoriously tiny. There was a wrought iron railing outside the large window ledge and the window opened right into the room, giving the feeling of a balcony. The ledge was big enough for us both to sit on and admire the street in the late afternoon sunshine. Net curtains were provided for modesty and also heavy lined curtains, which allowed us to sleep in darkness. I am convinced that the reason these are so rare in hotels is to make sure you get out of the room early so that they can clean it.

The décor was nothing special, slightly peeling magnolia paint and heavy brown wood. A mustard coloured canopy was across the bed and pulled back to reveal an itchy brown blanket. After getting a few unexplained bites on the first night, the blanket went straight on the floor and we used the canopy instead. Sheets were clean though, the mattress was comfortable and the pillows enormous and fluffy. Despite the blanket, this was incredibly inviting and The Boyfriend promptly went to sleep for an hour, face down on the bed, fully clothed. In the meantime I looked around the room.

There was a large built in wardrobe between the bedroom and bathroom with a mirrored front, a wooden ledge above the head of the bed which served as a bedside table and a wooden corner shelf by the window which held a small flat screen television. This worked fine, although not all the channels listed in the nearby leaflet were available and the only English speaking channel was Sky news. There was an Italian channel on which we later watched a hilarious version of Deal or No Deal where the presenter looked in all the boxes first, the audience and contestants sang a song when they pulled out an X and you could win a hippopotamus? The German channel seemed to show snooker on a loop and the French ones were mainly news. I know what you’re thinking though, we didn’t go to Paris to watch Holby City and Neighbours!

The Bathroom was a reasonable size, in marble effect tile and with a white suite. I’m obsessive about having a decent shower to wash my waist length hair, it needs to be powerful enough to get the shampoo out within 10 minutes, I’m not a patient person. This shower was excellent, easy to get the temperature spot on, no waiting for it to warm up and no shortage of hot water either. My only complaints about the bathroom are as follows; When I had a shower, the screen did nothing to hold the water in and the bathroom got flooded. This made The Boyfriend moan at me a bit, but I’m sure it must happen to everyone. Also, there was a strange cat flap shaped block of tiles under the bath and a strong smell of cigarette smoke. The Boyfriend suggested that perhaps a chain smoking Leprechaun was trapped under the bath? It turned out the smoke was coming through the window from the courtyard.

The welcome pack contained shower gel, some generous bars of soap, cotton buds and shoeshine. This was replaced daily as we used it up, and it has to be said that the room was always ready when we returned from our day. At no point were we ever disturbed by staff in the mornings or rushed out of our room so that they could clean. The only issue that really arose during our stay was on the first morning when we discovered we only had one towel (which I had already soaked – ooops!). After looking on the inside of the door and seeing the ‘maximum occupancy – 1 person’ sign, we realised that the guy at the desk had slyly given us a SINGLE room when we’d paid for a double. This irritated me as it seemed really cheeky, but The Boyfriend liked the cosy room and didn’t want to make a fuss and after all it was his birthday. In the end we settled it by asking at the front desk for an extra towel which appeared immediately with an apology that we’d only had one in the first place.

Most of the staff were friendly towards us, the maids saying Bonjour as we headed down to breakfast and the African lady who supervised breakfast dissolving into hysterical laughter as we tried to say our room number in French. On our last night the receptionist telephoned a nearby curry house which we wanted to visit, in order to check the opening hours and whereabouts. However, when we returned after the most revolting curry we’ve ever had, he told us that he wouldn’t trust any curry house in Paris – information that would have been more useful before we went!!

You may remember from previous reviews that breakfast is The Boyfriends favourite part of any hotel stay. I awoke on our first morning to him hunting under the bed for his shoe, anxious to get to his beloved coffee. The breakfast room is tiny and windowless, doubling as the Hotel Bar, with nowhere near enough tables for all the guests. Breakfast runs from 7.00 to 10.30 am and we must have been timing it just right to get a table every morning. The lavish spread would have made queuing worth it however, with; 3 kinds of muesli, cornflakes, fruit compote, yoghurt, tinned fruit, [slightly pale] scrambled eggs, bacon, bread rolls, cheese, ham, french toast, pain au chocolate, currant buns, croissants, grapefruit juice, orange juice, cold milk, hot milk, hot chocolate, coffee and a huge selection of teas, herbal and otherwise. This was all continuously topped up apart from the pain au chocolate – it seemed that when that ran out, that was it! Obviously, this meant breakfast took over an hour every morning as we ate ourselves silly and filled my handbag with cheese rolls for lunch. There’s probably still food languishing in there.

Although the breakfast room is small, like the rest of the hotel’s common areas it’s nicely presented with blue upholstery which matches the carpet throughout. The corridors are surprisingly bright and clean and we found nothing to complain about. It’s worth noting that the reception area also has an internet point which you can use for a small charge and that there’s wifi access for Orange phone customers (how does that work? Surely they use WAP?).

Most mornings after breakfast, we walked around the local area before boarding the metro. Slap bang in the middle of the 15th arrondisment, you can see the Eiffel Tower clearly if you stand on the pavement opposite the main entrance to the hotel. This is a quiet residential area, with very little late night noise even from traffic. Everything we needed was nearby, an (apparently) all night shop with fresh fruit and a friendly proprietor, 2 supermarkets, a boulangerie and several restaurants. Of these restaurants, it’s worth noticing that the Cine Italia was far and away the best, with a great selection of vegetarian food for me and a hearty meat lasagne for The Boyfriend. On Sunday morning, the hotel is perfectly positioned for the market stalls which spring up on every bit of the pavement.

This was a really enjoyable stay and I’d stay here again without hesitation. It was good value as part of a package deal (worked out around £110 each for all 4 nights), but the going rate for our room was 160 Euro per night – be warned! 

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