Hôtel la Petite Bohème

The best part of this hotel is its location. It’s away from the main hustle and bustle of the town, up a side street off the main road through Le Lavandou, but less than five minutes away from shops and restaurants and less than ten minutes from the beach. Overall however we were disappointed. Having had a motorcycle stolen when touring France almost my first priority when selecting a hotel now is some form of private parking. The Tripadvisor and *********** websites state there is “Free parking”. To me this means that the hotel has its own parking. It does not. There are five or six spaces on the very steep street with a ‘hotel parking’ sign on the wall. I stress that this inaccuracy is on the Tripadvisor and *********** websites, the hotel’s doesn’t mention parking at all. We were lucky that the space right outside the gate of the hotel was vacant when we arrived. Fortunately we did not intend to use the motorcycle while at Le Lavandou as the chances of that space, or indeed any space, being available when we got back would have been slim. To get into the hotel reception there are a six to eight stone steps from street level. Our room was on the first floor which could only be accessed up more stairs. There is no lift. To get to the “Exotic Garden” also requires walking down the stairs to street level and then another six to eight stairs to get to the garden. It you have any mobility problems this hotel is definitely not for you. We had booked a “Double King Size Room with courtyard view”. That turned out to be a view of a tree and the building next door. If we stretched out of the window a bit we could see the gas tank and a washing line (see photos). Not really much of a view at all. Having been there we should have booked a room with a terrace. All the photographs we could find on the websites showed that the rooms had shower cubicles or were in the bath with a screen. Ours was in the bath with a plastic shower curtain (see photo). It must be around 20 years since I last came across anything like that. Inevitably that meant that taking a shower meant constantly having to stop the shower curtain wrapping itself around you. We were provided with a small bottle of shower gel. When that had been used it was not replaced. There is a breakfast buffet but it is an odd arrangement. Very small quantities of everything are put out. Although that minimises waste it does mean you are constantly having to ask for items to be replenished. What was offered was very average. The fruit juice tased like it was the long-life stuff that comes in cartons. The cooked meats and cheese were only cheap cheese slices, thin chorizo and salami slices and small slices of “processed” ham. Breakfast was exactly the same every day. We would have been better off taking the short walk into the town and having breakfast at one of the cafes there. On the last day they ran out of croissants when there was still well over an hour of the scheduled breakfast time left. Appar