Review: Hotel De Nell Paris ~ Few vs Many Few vs Many

Review: Hotel De Nell Paris

The second hotel of our Paris trip is called Hotel De Nell Paris and located in the 9th arrondisement. This place is just outside the real city center. Before visiting Nell we don’t really have any experience with this neighborhood, but this will change in a second or two.

Though the hotel is located outside the center, it’s only a 15 minute walk north from Chatelet les halles or 15 minutes west from the famous Printemps/La Fayette area. We just came from this really stuffy hotel so we’re hoping to get some more space at Hotel Nell. But of course we already knew this was taken care of. We do our research before visiting.

At hotels, you’ve got the friendly staff, and the mega friendly (without being annoying) staff. Hotel Nell has the mega friendly ones. We arrive a bit early but we got the feeling all the maids we’re ordered to our room to clean it asap because the front office guy understands that it’s best for a traveler to get to the room once arrived. This is true. We really wouldn’t mind to just leave our stuff and check out the neighborhood, but it was no option. 10 minutes it took them to clean the room.

In those 10 minutes we inspected the lobby, sitting area, game room and restaurant. Yes, you’re reading this correctly. They have a game room. But it’s not your ordinary playstation 4 room. No, this small room which leads to the restaurant has 4 very special tables. Each table represents a game. We saw a Chess table, Backgammon and a Scrabble version. The fourth has slipped our mind, sorry for that.

The guy from the front office now comes to tell us our room is ready. He brings us to the room and explains how everything works. The room is enormous. Not really of course (we’ve seen bigger), but if you come from a room that’s 15 square meters, a 45 square meter version is a very big improvement.

We love everything about the room. The bed is nice and soft, but no too soft (this happens a lot). The bathroom is truly extraordinary. It has a big italian shower (rain shower) and the Japanese bathtub. What’s a Japanese bathtub? A tub that fits just 1 person and it has this small bench inside. It’s really cool and gives the room a nice ‘international’ flavor.

What rests is to see if the mega friendliness at the front office was sincere or just an act. I go down to ask where to get the best crepe Nutella, without having to walk too much. He reacts enthusiastic (letting know you want real Paris treats works like a charm apparently). He asks me if I want him to send someone to get if for us but that sounds a bit too much. I want to pick it up myself. He recommends this place which doesn’t really do take-away but I go there anyway. This creates a fun situatiation because the people inside are all locals and they wonder what I am doing there. Now it’s time to act like a tourist so I explain in my best French that I want my crepes to go. He understands and 10 minutes later I am back in the hotel room with 2 hot and delicious Parisian pancakes.

The next day we check out after a good night rest. We don’t do breakfast because it’s not included in our complementary stay. If it was, and it was as good as the rest of the hotel, I would have rated this place a 9.0. And they don’t come that high that often. In other words, got some money to spend? Stay at Hotel de Nell in Paris. It’s almost perfect.