Hôtel les Chansonniers

I stayed in this hotel with my girlfriend for 8 nights while we were visiting Paris. Before we got there we knew it was a budget hotel so we didn't expect too much out of it. I have to stay that my expectations were surpassed in most every regard. The room was small of course but it was clean and the bed was fine, no bugs and it was plenty big and comfortable. Our room had a sink and a bidet along with a flatscreen TV and a phone. We never bothered using the phone but the TV was nice. There was a small closet space. Two people unpacked two large suitcases and two backpacks and still had plenty of room to move about when we needed to so I didn't find space to be much of an issue. We used the shared toilet and shower and those were just fine. There were two showers and we only had to compete for them on maybe two mornings. The facilities were all clean and of adequate size. We did get pretty lucky though because the two showers and toilet were literally two steps outside of our door. Ask for room 35 on the second floor. I believe there was another toilet on the first floor as well. The staff was friendly and did their best to accommodate us by speaking English. The room was cleaned daily and the staff seemed honest, I had dropped some coins in the floor and couldn't find them and I returned that evening and they had put them on the end table. The hotel was quiet and we left our windows open and were not bothered by any street noise. The neighborhood itself is very working class but seemed quite safe. The Menilmontant metro station is only about a two minute walk away. From there it only takes about 20 minutes and one line change to get to the largest metro station in downtown Paris. There is a McDonalds right next to the metro that has free Wifi that we used often. Also there is a grocery store, Marche Casino, down the street that we frequented that stays open late and has a large selection. A mini fridge would have been the one amenity I would have liked.

Prós: Overall we both thought that our experience here was great. Of course it is not the Hilton, but we paid XXX USD a night to stay in Paris, cheaper than most hotels even in the Middle of Nowhere, USA.

Contras: Wifi wasn't free but cost 3 Euro an hour. The signal in the room was very good though. The only situation we had was that we had a mouse in the room one night. However, that may have been our fault as we had left cheese sitting out and the window open.