On our recent short weekend trip to Paris, Professor M and I stayed at Novotel Paris Les Halles. As we only had a bout 48 hours in Paris, the location of the hotel and easy access to both the airport (for me) and Eurostar (for him) were the deciding factors when choosing a hotel, and we decided to forgo the boutique hotels we would normally go for.
And the location of the hotel is certainly central: Adjacent to Forum des Halles, and within a walking distance from Rue de Rivoli, the hotel was a good base for our aimless walking tours on both banks of the Seine. What we had not anticipated was that at the moment Les Halles is basically a huge construction site…
Still, we had a nice room with minimalist decor and innovative window shutters…
And a built-in tv chair reminiscent of the 1960s space age designs…
Speaking of the 60s, the hotel play area for children featured some Finnish design: the 1967 ‘Pastilli’ chair accompampanied by 2 ‘Puppies’ (2003), all by Eero Aarnio, one of my favourite furniture designers.
What about the amenities?
Well, there was a nice enough fitness room, but we managed to find enough excuses not to try it out…
And breakfast…
The breakfast room was busy, really busy… and overtaken by barbarians, I mean hotel guests… The buffet breakfast was great, there was plenty of choice, and the staff were attentive and quick to replace empty trays. But the staff had their hands full cleaning after the barbarians, sorry, the hotel guests running around frantically as if afraid they were going to run out of food any minute… I have seen my share (if not more) of hotel buffet breakfasts, but I’ve never seen hotel guests behaving so badly: pushing and shoving, trying to cut the line, dropping off their dirty plates on a pile of clean plates, dropping food on the counter… Having breakfast in the restaurant was so stressful that we decided to have breakfast in the room the following day. And the staff very kindly catered to our request for brown bread instead of white and natural yoghurt instead of sweet pastry.
Oh well, it was a very short trip. But I’m sure I will be back, one day…
Tiina
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Not bad, the view was certainly awesome!Baci,Coco et La vie en rose by Valeria Arizzi
I miss the view already…
The holel is very nice and I like very much the minimalistic decor! It is really surprising to read how the barbarians had their breakfast! Funny description of them! 🙂
It was a stressful experience… But the hotel was great.
That tv chair is crazy! Hotel Plastique! Chic.
Exactly!
That hotel looks awesome … even with the hassles of the "barbarians", you made me laugh with your description of the breakfast. Lot of kisses, dear friend.
Well, tourists are the modern day barbarians, or that's the way it looks like in some holiday resorts…