It's Paris, you know the rooms are going to be tiny, and that the lifts will be small. That's what it's always going to be like unless you stay in a new build or somewhere that's been extensively renovated.
Hotel Unic has not...
The first hiccup was that although our group had booked into the same hotel - I think 10 rooms in all, we weren't all staying there. Unknown to us until we had arrived, they'd been rebooked into another hotel down the street by our hotel. It would have been nice to have some forewarning, as it did mess us around and made it harder to organise meeting up.
We were there before check-in so left our bags in the luggage room - just past the front desk but without a lock, essentially you walk in and take whatever you want... Returned at 2 and was given my electronic key card with instructions that I needed to leave the key whenever I left the hotel, I guess a good security measure as it had not only the hotel name, but the room number on it - isn't the card key the point of not having a room number on it?
Pros
My room was on the 4th floor, and had a little balcony, it's the only floor with one. It was relatively clean, the bathroom was kitted out and at least the tv had a couple of English channels. Plenty of hot water. There is a nice courtyard where they've expanded to build more rooms including larger flat type I'm told. And Aircon! A definite must in the Summer, I was round the corner the previous month and was baking at night...
No comment
The room was small, and it was difficult to get past the bed to the cupboard and balcony. Didn't try the breakfast.
Cons
The shower was tiny, if I tried to wash my back, turning round inevitably lead to my hitting the shower tap, either turning off the water or changing the temp to either freezing or boiling... The bed was a little worse for wear, the pillows rather thin, the fridge was locked, so I couldn't store drinks or anything in there (I unplugged it and charged a battery pack instead). But the worse thing ever... The Safe. It was locked when I got into the room, not really an issue as I didn't have a lot with me but it would have been nice to be able to lock away my passport. BUT at some point, it started to run out of battery... and when it does, it starts to beep. and beep. and beep. Told the front desk and they said they'd look at it, I'm sure they did. I'm sure they came up to the room and stood looking at it for a while... but other than that I don't think they did anything... In the end I took the spare blanket and tucked it around the safe, successfully muffling it.
The front desk is manned all day, but at night you may have to ring the doorbell in case the guy has fallen asleep (granted we were coming back at 4am). Check out time is apparently 11am although our confirmation said 12pm.
All in all, it was a decent price and if I needed to be in Montparnasse for a couple of days (I'm normally there for a day or two at the end of June taking an early train out of the station there), I'd consider staying there again. However if I just wanted to be in Paris. I'd do it in another district. read more