1er Etage SoPi-Montmartre

The hotel impresses with its spacious, well-designed rooms, central location, and warm, professional staff. Guests appreciate the varied, quality breakfast and spotless, comfortable rooms.

Probably the worst hotel I've ever stayed in: the room flooded overnight, it's infested by bedbugs (check the pics of our bites plus the video for the gory details) and the couple that manage the hotel are more interested in blaming the guests than making things right. All this for the bargain price of 350 euros/night. Avoid unless the prospect of staying in France's answer to Fawlty Towers appeals to you. More on our tale of woe: we booked a two-night stay at 1er Etage SoPi for the Paris Olympics. We didn't plan on spending much time in the hotel as we had a pretty packed schedule, so all we really needed was a half-decent place to crash in the evenings. The first sign of problems was when the air conditioner would not turn on despite our best efforts. Hotel air conditioning is often quirky and the hotel was unstaffed by the time we arrived, so we didn't have time to investigate further as we were going out for dinner. Pretty annoying in the middle of a heatwave, but we figured we'd just ask about it at breakfast the next day. Fast-forward to 4 in the morning and I wake up feeling incredibly itchy. I realise that I have a rather large number of bite clusters on my arms and torso, which could *only* have come from the hotel; I'd intentionally been wearing long-sleeved shirts outside to protect myself from the sun. Needless to say I didn't sleep much more that night; far from ideal when you're supposed to be enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime experience! My partner wakes up a few hours later and notices lots of bites on her body, too. Great. We then turned the lights on and noticed that the room had flooded overnight. This was the final straw. We immediately packed our bags, pointed to the flooding and informed the hotel manager, Juliette, that we were leaving. Juliette was obviously aware that the air conditioner had issues and was leaky; she then put us through to her husband, Serge, on the phone. Serge put on an impressive display of guest-blaming: "why didn't you tell us, you turned the temperature down too low [!], I tested it yesterday morning so it must've been your fault...". Hilariously, Juliette denied that the room could possibly have bedbugs because it was "cleaned every day". I find it hard to believe that she could possibly be so clueless; cleaning alone won't eliminate bedbugs, and anyone in the hotel industry should know that. I've since had it confirmed by a doctor that the "cluster" of bites we received (see the pics) is consistent with bedbug feeding patterns. (For some reason Juliette thought it was appropriate to ask my partner to show all her bites. Uh, not until you show us your dermatology qualifications, thank you.) All this was within about 15 hours of our arrival, so naturally I ask for a refund as we're leaving for another (non-disgusting) hotel. Serge refuses and says they can only refund the second night as an act of "goodwill", even though we left at 9 in the morning so the room was completely unoccupied the en

Beautifully designed room and whole property. Spotlessly clean and lovely breakfast with variations every day. Felt like a little quiet haven in a busy and interesting part of the city. The hotel is near the metro and not far from Gare du Nord.