Le Marcel

We booked this hotel for one night via
as it had fairly good reviews and the price was right. I didn’t realize when I booked it that it was really close to Gare du Nord. Only a 5 minute walk! That was a truly serendipitous choice of a hotel. We arrived in Paris via the Eurostar train from London and we were super tired and overwhelmed by all the hustle and bustle of Gare du Nord, but we were happy to learn that the hotel was very close to this station. We looked at my iPhone’s maps app and it showed us how to get there.
The hotel’s sign is small, so it was kind of hard to spot from the street. It’s right next to the much bigger Grande Hôtel des Voyageurs and across the street from the Yummy Asian Food restaurant. The reception is on the 1^st floor (2^nd floor if you’re from the U.S.), so you’ll have to take the tiny elevator or walk a flight of stairs. The elevator is too small for comfort, so we chose the stairs.
The reception staff was really friendly and nice, and spoke English very well. We were upgraded to a Junior Suite on the 3^rd floor without extra cost and he said that we could help ourselves to anything in the mini-​bar for free. He also let us borrow their adapter since we forgot to bring one from the States and we needed to charge our phones.
Thank God for being upgraded to a bigger room! We had a living room where we could sit and leave our luggage open. The bathroom wasn’t too bad, except that the shower was kinda small. The bed was really comfortable! It wasn’t too soft or too firm. Our suite was very clean and had a lot of windows which open up and give you a view of the other apartments and hotel rooms in the square.
The location of the hotel is a mix of good and not so good. The good – close to Gare du Nord, across from the Gare de L’Est, close to the Canal Saint-​Martin, close to a lot of inexpensive «ethnic» restaurants, and stores like Monoprix. The not so good – not the most fashionable part of Paris and far from tourist sites.
My only complaint about the hotel is the wi-​fi. We could not access it from our phones or iPads. They have two networks and we could not log in to either one of them. We told the reception staff and all he said was that that happens sometimes. :(
The hotel offers breakfast for 8 € for a petit-​dejeuner or 15 € for a larger breakfast. We did not have breakfast as we had to leave early and walk back to Gare du Nord to pick up our rental car for the next phase of our trip. You can eat a cheaper breakfast outside if you want to save some Euros.
Not sure if we’ll stay here again. The room was nice and the staff was very friendly, but not being able to access the wi-​fi is a dealbreaker.