ibis Paris Porte de Bagnolet

The room was clean, the sheets and towels were nice, breakfast had good pastries, coffee and juice, and the Wi-Fi was excellent. I also felt safe coming back late, and had no incidents. The location works well if you’re using public transport: most major sights are within about 30 minutes, and CDG is under an hour away. There’s a shopping center next door, though the supermarket there always had a huge queue. Sleep was the problem. My room had no AC, and the highway beside the hotel was noisy with the window open. Closing it shut out the traffic but left me sweating all night. Other guests were loud too, and the rooms aren’t soundproof. I wouldn’t recommend staying here in summer. With AC, it could be a very nice place.

The HVAC never worked, and the towels were so thin they were soaked before I was dry. The rooms are small, as you’d expect in Paris, and look nice at first, but after a while you can see the redecorating is starting to give way over underlying problems. The staff mostly ignored me. I waited while two front desk employees chatted for ten minutes before they acknowledged me when I asked for a laundry bag. They said they didn’t have one and gave me a trash bag instead. I was told my laundry would be ready the next day, then the day after that. When I asked again, they handed it back and said they’d forgotten to send it out. I won’t come back and can’t recommend this place.

The shower was the one decent thing, even though it wasn’t especially clean. The towels smelled bad, and when we left one on the floor to avoid touching the dirty floor after showering, it was gone when we returned. We think they picked it up and one of us ended up using it. Breakfast was poor too, though that was okay. The room smelled awful, and we later found the source was one of the blankets. The upper bed hadn’t been made, so we had to ask for extra sheets. One sheet had a bleached period stain, and the others had black fabric spots, as if they’d been washed with black clothes. There was dirt and dust between the upper bunk’s metal rod and wood, black marks on the floor, and cigarette ash there when we arrived. We came by taxi, expecting it might be fine because Paris is expensive, but even a cheap hostel should be cared for. This place made me think the owner was a slacker, and I wasn’t wrong. I’d recommend it even to my worst enemy. That would just be cruel.

They charged us 20 euros more at reception than the price we’d agreed to online. In the room, the floor hadn’t been swept and the toilet wasn’t clean. The bathroom bin had no liner, and there weren’t enough towels when we arrived. The third bed had no pillow or blankets, and the bathroom soap was already three-quarters empty.