Comfort Hotel Paris Porte d'Ivry

“SMALL rooms BUT EXCELLENT staff, location and CANCELLATION POLICY”

Yes, rooms are very small by US standards, smaller than the smallest room I saw at the College Park (Atlanta Airport) Econo Lodge. However, they are twice as big as what they call “single rooms” in London’s budget hotels, which are half way between the traditional English phone booth and a sm... more

Yes, rooms are very small by US standards, smaller than the smallest room I saw at the College Park (Atlanta Airport) Econo Lodge. However, they are twice as big as what they call “single rooms” in London’s budget hotels, which are half way between the traditional English phone booth and a small US closet, where you sleep in a tiny 90 centimeters army cot WITHOUT AC for the price you pay at the Los Angeles LAX Sheraton! At this CHOICE COMFORT HOTEL PORTE D’IVRY at least, you will sleep in a double bed in a small but clean room WITH AC, tiny desk and phone, and a full bath with the second biggest shower that I’ve ever seen in Europe, after the one of room 823 at the Orly Best Western Plus, which is even bigger. It also has a sink with a hair dryer and a private “wishing well”, the greatest invention of mankind… Those amenities such as a big refrigerator, microwave, iron and ironing board that I always see in all CHOICE HOTELS (whether Comfort Inn, Quality Inn, Clarion, etc.) in the US for around $100 with buffet breakfast included, are just a dream in Europe, so forget about it! I’ll say the same about the ice machine, which we find even in cheapest motels, and sometimes on every floor in high-end hotels like the Clarion. Forget it! The only place where I have seen an ice machine outside of the US was at the Gran Hotel Argentino in Buenos Aires, after I harassed the manager during more than seven years asking for it during every trip in the 1990s! THE MAIN ASSET of this Comfort Hotel Porte d’Ivry is its LOCATION. A short 4 blocks walk will put you at “Porte d’Ivry”, where you will see the terminal of bus 27 to go to “Quartier Latin”, “Notre-Dame”, “Opéra” and “Gare Saint-Lazare”, and also the terminal of bus 83, which will take you to “Port Royal” and “Sèvres-Babylone”. At the same “Porte d’Ivry”, you will also see the “Métro” (subway) line 7 going from “La Courneuve” in the north of Paris to “Mairie d’Ivry” in the south. If you enjoy traveling underground, this line will take you straight to “Chatelet” and “Opéra”. But I prefer to do that journey with bus 27. Last but not least, at that “Porte d’Ivry”, you will be able to take TRAM 3a, which circles Paris on the south and will take you from “Pont du Garigliano” on the west, to “Porte de Vincennes” on the east, where you will be able to take TRAM 3b, which circles Paris on the north side, and will take you to “Porte de la Chapelle”, where you will be able to take bus 350 to Roissy CDG. And if you fly to Orly, as I do with Iberia via Madrid, now that American Airlines have discontinued their nonstop flights 62 and 63 between Miami and Paris, then you can take the ORLYBUS and get off at the first stop in Paris, by my beloved Cité Universitaire, where I lived the best five years of my long life in the 1960s, then walk a block to “Montsouris” and take TRAM 3a to “Porte d’Ivy”, only six stations away. The bus and subway tickets, which I had always known since I landed in Paris in 1963, have now disappeared. In August 2023, I had to buy a card for 2 €, which I then charged with 10 trips for another 16.90 €, for a total of 18.90 €. In other words, each trip will come to 1.89 €, which was a bit less than $2 US in August 2023. France has now joined places like Madrid, Lisbon, London and Buenos Aires, which all have exactly the same system. However, unlike Miami bus drivers, in Paris you may pay and get change back on the bus but only with small amounts up to 5 €. Of course, you will pay more than you would with a card, just as it is the case in Madrid busses, which are still cheaper than Paris ones. Naturally, if you travel by limousine you don’t need all this information. But if you travel by limousine, chances are that you will be staying at the Hilton rather than at this budget Comfort Hotel, good for a retired professor like me after 46 years of priesthood, teaching French for peanuts between “Great Paris” and FIU! On the other hand, the triangle between “Porte d’Ivry”, “Porte de Choisy” and “Porte d’Italie” on one side and the “Place d’Italie” on the other side, is what is wrongly called “Chinatown”. It should rather be called “Indochina town” because this area is populated by refugees from Viet Nam and Cambodia. I was living right there, at the Tour Verdi on “Porte de Choisy”, when they started arriving around 1975, and that area has been totally transformed ever since. There, you will find lots of restaurants, groceries and bakeries. But you don’t have to walk so far. Just a couple of blocks from this COMFORT HOTEL, there is a nice square with several restaurants, fast foods, cafés and, at the corner of the square, there is a nice grocery called INTERMARCHÉ, where you will find everything you need, from water, wine and beer to small hot pizzas. During my last trip to Paris in August 2023, I spent 7 days in room 703 with a wide open “ocean” view… That is, the “ocean” of cars and trucks which flood the “Périphérique” 24/7 (expressway circling Paris, where you drive between 5 and 15 miles per hour most of the time…), but with the double windows you won’t hear any noise. The only problem was that the elevator stops on the 6th floor, so I had to walk up and down several times a day between the 6th and the 7th floor, which was an excellent exercise for my old bones. FINALLY, what I appreciate most of all about this hotel, is their HONEST CANCELLATION POLICY: DAY OF ARRIVAL BY 4 pm. When I started traveling in the 1960s, all hotels accepted to reserve a room on a “6 pm Courtesy Hold” and you only had to give a credit card in order to guarantee the room for late arrival because at 6 pm your reservation automatically disappeared. This happened to me once in Scotland and I had to find another hotel. Then, after 2000, hotels started requesting a credit card number, even if you were arriving early in the afternoon, but you could cancel your reservation without any fee UNTIL the DAY OF ARRIVAL BY 6 PM. BUT NOW, more and more hotels are adopting a cancellation policy of 1, 2 and even several days before the day of arrival. This is something that I never accept, because every time that my flight has been cancelled (which has happened more than 20 times in the past 30 years for multiple reasons, from volcano ashes to weather problems, mechanical problems, controllers strikes, pilots strikes, flight attendants strikes, Paris CDG airport firemen strikes, just name it!, whether with TWA, UNITED AIRLINES, DELTA, TAP, IBERIA or AMERICAN AIRLINES!) it has always been cancelled at the very last minute, NEVER 24 HOURS BEFORE DEPARTURE!!! They get away with it because people accept it, until the day their flight is cancelled at the very last minute and they lose their money, learning the hard way that they should never accept that cancellation policy! This is the main reason why I am now preparing my next stay at this COMFORT HOTEL PORTE D’IVRY for May 2024, long before the Paris Olympic Games, because I suffer from “foulophobie chronique” (“chronic group-phobia” in English…) and all those OG crowds would be fatal for my health… As long as they maintain their EXCELLENT CANCELLATION POLICY of DAY OF ARRIVAL BY 4 PM, I will keep going back to this convenient COMFORT HOTEL from the CHOICE HOTELS group, where I have the PLATINUM STATUS, just as with BEST WESTERN. However, if they ever join the competition and start asking for 1 day before arrival to cancel the reservation, then… I will have to find another place!

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