Hotel Bonaparte in Paris

Hotel Bonaparte (61 rue Bonaparte, 75006, Paris, FRANCE; phone +33 01 43 26 97 37, fax +33 01 46 33 57 67 or visit www.hotelbonaparte.fr) is in an excellent location, but I didn’t like the hotel and would not stay there again. My stay was in October ’06.

This 2-star hotel is two blocks from Place St. Germain heading north (toward the Seine) and one block from Place St. Sulpice heading south. There are Métro stops at both places.

I paid €119 ($154) for single use of a double room (No. 9). If two people had been using the same room, the charge would have been €126 ($170). The room wasn’t a bad size for a Paris double.

On my arrival in the morning, Madame told me that my room wouldn’t be available until around 6 p.m. When I finally saw it I was very unhappy, as it appeared to me to be shabby and gloomy. It faced an interior courtyard, which resulted in the room’s having very little natural light, but indeed I had requested a quiet room.

My room had a double bed, a wooden armoire with five or six hangers of various styles (none suitable for hanging a pair of pants), a small table with two side chairs, and charcoal-gray print carpeting that looked like it hadn’t been changed in decades.

There was a telephone in the room, programmable for a wakeup call. The television offered several French cable stations plus CNN in English. The small room refrigerator provided no cooling. There were no additional outlets for such items as camera chargers, so when I charged my camera battery I moved and unplugged the refrigerator.

The bathroom was surprisingly big and modern, not state-of-the-art but looking recently updated. The built-in hair dryer was so weak as to be useless. There was no electrical outlet for shavers.

My room’s doorknob was hanging by a thread, and I asked twice that it be repaired. I was concerned that it actually might come off in my hand. The front desk clerk said it would be fixed, but it wasn’t.

Included in the room rate, breakfast consisted of coffee, tea or chocolate with a croissant and a roll. The baked goods were not high quality, and after the first morning I was much happier having breakfast elsewhere. On the days that I did not have breakfast in the hotel, Madame refunded me a small amount as a breakfast credit, which I did not ask for, so I thought that was kind.

After the first night I called a 3-star hotel I had stayed at before and asked if they had availability. Once I learned that they didn’t, I knew I didn’t want to spend my short trip hotel-shopping, and I hated the room a bit less in the light of day, so I made up my mind to stay.

This is the second 2-star hotel I’ve stayed at in Paris, and maybe I’m just not cut out for 2-stars.

ELAINE LAVINE

New York, NY