A Frenchly Honest review, as told by MaisOui Le Frenchy.
Let…read moreme be precise: Hôtel Regina Louvre has a room that could seduce even the most exacting of critics -- and I am, by all accounts, the most exacting of critics.
The room speaks the language of Belle Époque restraint: white paneled walls with classical moulding, brass wall sconces casting a warm amber glow, an arched mirror presiding above the bed like a silent maître d', and French doors that open -- let us pause here -- onto a view of the Jardin des Tuileries, the Eiffel Tower, and the Arc de Triomphe. All three. Simultaneously. Paris, performing for you as if it had been rehearsing.
The freshly repainted walls and what appeared to be a new carpet suggest a management that still cares -- one that invests quietly, without announcement, in the dignity of the room itself. The front desk staff and bellmen were, I must confess, genuinely gracious -- not the performative warmth one endures at lesser establishments, but something resembling sincerity. The nights were quiet. Remarkable on all counts.
And yet. One does not review a five-star establishment with the lenient eye reserved for lesser addresses. The standards are set by the classification itself -- and it is against those standards that what follows must be read.
The glass table bore the evidence of a cleaning effort that had, somewhere along the way, lost its ambition -- smear marks left mid-gesture, as though the housekeeper had been called away by something more pressing and never returned. Beneath the sofa, a champagne foil wrapper remained, a quiet relic of a previous guest's celebration that no one had thought to retire.
And the toilet. I will say only this: something had been there before us. Something that pre-dated our arrival. Something that, in a five-star establishment overlooking the most photographed skyline in the world, ought to have been addressed before the key was handed over. I will leave the imagination to do the rest.
The voiturier/valet was otherwise engaged -- with his telephone -- as we arrived. We retrieved our own luggage. We walked to the door ourselves. One is left to wonder whether it was the device that blinded him, or whether, upon a brief assessment of our presentation, he simply concluded we were not his concern. In front of Hôtel Regina Louvre. In Paris.
There is something else worth saying -- and I do not say it lightly. Les Hôtels Baverez has been in the hands of the same family since 1900. Four generations. Three hotels -- the Regina, the Raphael, the Majestic -- each one preserved not as a museum piece, but as a living, breathing Parisian institution. In a city increasingly colonized by international conglomerates with identical lobbies and soulless loyalty programs, this matters. I will return.
The room earns five stars. The housekeeping and the voiturier together cost it one.
For the full verdict -- the bar, the corridors, the theatre of it all -- the Frenchly Honest YouTube review is forthcoming. You will want to watch it.
