Hotel La Réserve de Brive — Hotel in Brive-la-Gaillarde

This is the second time we have stayed here and unfortunately it wasn’t as good as the first time. |We had a nice room on the first visit with a lovely big bathroom that was clean and modern. However our second visit showed us that you can’t always rely on past information. ||The room was much smaller which didn’t really bother us as there was still enough room to put things however the bathroom was a different story. It had a shower over the bath and at first I was pleased as I sometimes like to have a bath if I have time. Sadly I decided against that when I saw the state of the grouting around the tap area of the bath. I didn’t want to have to lie in the bath and be staring at that during my soak. The other problem was the shower screen was far too short and didn’t reach the top of the bath hence the water went all over the floor when having a shower. ||The other downside with the Hotel is there aren’t many free parking spaces and big vehicle owners beware the spaces are not massive. There’s plenty of paid parking near by so I don’t know if you get any sort of discount if you have to use those as we’ve always been lucky enough to get a free one so it might be worth checking that with the hotel. ||The really good point for this hotel is the location. It is only a few mins walk into the heart of the city and it is right next to a lovely park area. There are also lots of restaurants along the street from the Hotel so you have plenty of choice on your doorstep. Whilst we didn’t have breakfast this time we did have it on our other visit and that was very nice with a nice selection of self service items. However be warned that the eggs are not hard boiled. Unless we missed the sign we thought they were and only found out they were raw and to be cooked yourself when Hubby cracked one onto his plate. It may be there was a sign though so that would be our fault for not seeing it. ||All in all the Hotel has many good points but sadly on this occasion the bathroom was a huge disappointment especially after having had such a lovely room...

The team at the hotel were positive (if very disorganised) during a reservation mix-up with their systems and tried to be helpful. However, we were disappointed with several aspects of our stay:||||1) The room (no. 10) in no way looked like any of the photos used to advertise the hotel! Those show contemporary, refreshed rooms... We had black damp in the shower, tiny shower cubicle/bath with low roof, damp spots on the ceiling, mattresses so hard that we did not sleep well, light fittings hanging off the walls.||||2) Zero sound-proofing between rooms. Our neighbours liked to hike around their room in the middle of the night and the noise from the floorboards was enough to wake us and keep us awake.||||3) The hotel is advertised with free parking which is one of the reasons we chose it. This is dishonest as they have more than 20 rooms and only 5 parking bays - guess how many were available when we arrived, only one hour after the earliest check-in time? Instead, we had to pay the €15 overnight charge at the public car park 150 metres away.||||The owners offered a free breakfast to compensate for the booking mix up but we were so tired after very little sleep that we...

The hotel was very pleasant, with a terrace, bar and at the back a breakfast room. The public car park at the front had about eight parking spaces at the side of the hotel reserved for residents. The decor was largely grey, black and white. Sadly, there were tiny chips out of the dark grey woodwork, everywhere. We had a family room, which was all that was available when we booked. It consisted of two bedrooms, a separate toilet between them and a bathroom off one of the bedrooms. |The toilet was tiny, very narrow and only about 40cm from door to pan, with no extractor fan.|The head-height fitting was loose so that the shower head could not be put in it. Although it took us only a minute to screw this back together, we shouldn’t have had to do this - the issue should have been picked up by cleaners, reported and sorted. |The lights had no, or only wire, shades and were much too bright/harsh. |A kettle and a small fridge (as we had in other hotels) would have been good. Breakfast at the hotel was 12 euros, with tea/coffee, juice, cereals, bread/pastries and preserves, eggs, charcuterie, cheese,...