Villa Bellagio Apartments

The room was clean, and the receptionists were nice and helpful. The hotel isn't well connected to the city, though: there's no metro or train station nearby, so you mostly depend on the bus to Laplace. The last bus is around 12:30 a.m., which makes it hard to stay out late. The elevator also seemed to be out of order all the time. That wasn't much of a problem for us on the first floor, but there were three more floors. Still a good option if money's tight and you want to be more self-sufficient in Paris.

When we got to our first room, there was already a man inside, lounging in his underwear. He even asked my friend in the connected room to get him water from the fridge. The front desk moved us to other rooms, but didn't seem alarmed. They also acted as if they couldn't understand our refund request, even though they spoke English fine. We wanted the refund so we could move to a more savory hotel. The replacement rooms were clean. The hotel also kept trying to charge our friends an extra “tax” even though we'd paid all the fees up front. I wouldn't recommend booking here.

The bus drops you right at the hotel, and having a kitchen makes it a handy, cheap place to rest after a day in the city. The room is spacious and quiet, but the kitchen utensils needed washing before we could use them. There were cobwebs under the desk, and every morning we found the bedspread wrapped up on the desk, haha. Reception barely paid attention to us. For the low price, though, it's fine if you don't expect impeccable service.

The kitchenette is beautiful and the bathroom is spectacular, but the room wasn't nearly as comfortable as I expected. It was a mix of nice and beat-up: dirty carpet, scratchy blankets, and only one pillow. The “queen” bed was actually two twin beds pushed together. Breakfast was very small, too.