If you are looking for an affordable yet nice, clean place to stay in Pari that is conveniently close to public transport stops, and in a nice neighbourhood that has a delicious 24 hour restaurant, boulangeries, stationery shops,and other neighbourhood shops; Consider staying in Hotel Henriette, previously known as Hotel Residence Les Gobelins. I love that it is not in the crazy touristy area and we were able to see how the locals lived during your stay in Paris. It also allowed us to practice some basic French!

Previously Hotel Residence Les Gobelins

If you are looking for reviews on the internet, you may want to search for it under it’s previous name, Hotel Residence Les Gobelins. Pronounciation is very different from the English one so here is a guide. Remove “avenue” and replace the “D” with an “L”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwqaCWEeymM]

I found this hotel by going through pages of a forum discussing how to get in touch with the Assumption Convent for a cheap stay in their dormitory. In the end this idea was scratched off, because of the early 9pm curfew. Boo! The person posting the question on the forum ended up staying in Les Gobelins, saying that it was a boutique hotel where locals put up relatives who are in town for a visit. I loved it already.

Our Room

As expected in Paris, the room is small, but lovely and thoughtfully designed. The space was very efficient and it had everything we needed for our 6 day stay, including a small closet. It was in the process of remodelling during our stay, but we were so happy because it was clean, the bathroom was nice and best of all the bed was comfortable with nice fluffy pillows. My best friend and I slept like princesses!

We were in an upper floor so when we woke up we were greeted by by sunshine and the beautiful view of Parisian rooftops. Who doesn’t love Parisian rooftoops? They are so quaint and the design is quite distinct.

You can see more photos here. Room rates here.

Affordable luxury

We spent less than 100 Euros per night and comparing that to the other options in the same price range in Paris, this place is a steal. (If I recall correctly my BFF and I spent 400 Euros for 5 nights) And much better than a hostel, and the staff were so lovely to us!

Another BIG plus for me were the pillows and beddings. In many hotels in Europe, though the beds might be good, I’ve had a problem with pillows – they are always too flat. So I always request for extra pillows. When we arrived in this hotel there were 5 fluffy pillows and a huge fluffy duvet. We slept very well… like sleeping on clouds really.

Because they are currently still under renovation, we couldn’t have breakfast on site. Instead we had breakfast everyday at a 24 hour restaurant a few doors down the road.

The secret to a lovely stay in Paris

The tip a Frenchwoman in Berlin gave me was to be sure to learn the basics in French of hello, good bye, thank you, I am SO sorry I don’t speak French, do you speak English?, and be very very polite and gracious. And true enough, the French that we met were so lovely and gracious indeed. We received so many acts of kindness. I felt so blessed during this trip. The French value graciousness and you cannot say merci and pardon or excusez-moi enough.