Review of Hôtel Clarisse 3*

If you are an insomniac, who likes to live on the edge and fancy a ghetto tour, getting high and enjoy gang warfare to a soundtrack of drum and bass, this is your place! This was booked as an anniversary treat, it turned into a horror story The area is a ghetto for Nigerian and African people, they shout at each other through out the day and night. They must be very hard of hearing as they could only listen to drum and bass at top volume, so much so the windows of our room vibrated! I'm 6ft 3 with a rugby build, I felt intimidated in the area, hoards of young men crowd the streets yelling at each other. Not a single day went by without us being offered drugs from random strangers. There is bugger all to do in the area, the nearest bar is two blocks away and the nearest cafe is a kebab place. The local tram stop is opposite and goes frequently, however it seems to house the local homeless that just ride up and down, as well as the women who have no control over their children. Not once did we not use the tram without a urine smelling homeless person and a couple of screaming children. The police are armed and seem to patrol the place in packs. Anyway, back to the hotel, it's dated but clean (ish), they forgot to service the room a couple of times. The hotel apologised and gave us replacement towels. Towards the end of our stay there, when things had got really bad (no air conditioning, open windows and screaming youth along with drum and bass playing until 4am! ) the staff were absent a lot of the time. We left early, it was meant to be a special romantic holiday and if we'd have stayed longer it would have ended in divorce! We waited around receiption to check out but nobody showed up, so we just left our key behind the receiption and left. We booked into the gorgeous Novotel just near the Effiel Tower, the receptionist felt sorry for us, and had a look of abject terror when we said where we stayed, if she'd had been wearing pearls, she would have clutched them! We got upgraded to an executive suite with a free mini bar and a bottle of wine to enjoy on the roof top bar on our first evening.