Hôtel du Jardin des Plantes — Hotel in Paris

I came to Paris as my graduation trip and chose this hotel to stay for about 8 days, besides the rooms, hallways, elevators and lobby all being super small and claustrophobic I had no issue with the hotel, it was clean and quiet. That is until New Year’s Eve, my boyfriend and I went out for the night and came back at around 3am (which yes was late at night but it was NYE, not a random weeknight) to find all the doors locked the lights off and nobody at the reception desk, we knocked for about an hour outside in the freezing cold, drunk and tired. We called and no one answered. Eventually as we knocked harder the glass panel in the door popped out and that’s when the worker ran upstairs to berate us that we broke the door and we’re paying for it, yelling at us, getting in our faces and physically touching my boyfriend while shouting “do not touch me”… all of this is crazy to me because none of this would’ve happened if he was doing his job instead of sleeping on another floor during his shift. As paying guests at a hotel we should never ever be locked out and unable to get inside a hotel, lock the doors because it’s nighttime, sure but then workers have to readily available to let guests in. I’ve never seen a hotel lock it’s doors and employees disappear in the middle of the night on New Year’s Eve leaving guests to stand in the cold with none of their belongings.we didn’t want a problem so we gave him the room number and last name so he could charge us for the door and went upstairs, when I was in the shower my boyfriend went downstairs to ask for towels and ended up detained by 8 police officers who were already waiting for him, threw him up against a wall like he was some dirtbag criminal and refused to speak English, screaming at him in French and therefore couldn’t communicate with him at all. Thankfully I went looking for him and was able to talk to the police and explain what actually happened and they apologized and let him go, but the entire night was ridiculous and it ruined our New Year’s Eve and our trip. Calling the cops after we had already gave him the info so we could pay for the door after it was HIS fault for locking us out of a hotel we PAID for, is unacceptable. Dealing with angry police in a foriegn countries where you have no idea of your rights, the laws, and there is a language barrier is downright dangerous. As I didn’t feel safe staying there after the incident I packed up my bags and left the next morning.Thankfully the employee I talked to the next morning was extremely understanding and apologetic about the entire incident and I even found out that the worker who locked us out and called the cops has done this before!!!! Taken the night shift and then locked people out to go take a nap leaving guests stranded on the street, and then getting aggressive with the paying customers who are rightfully upset about it. Having to pack up and leave and find a new hotel in the middle of our trip was wildly inconvenient but I didn’t want to run into that worker again so it was my only choice, the hotel reached out to appologize on behave of their employee and his actions which I really did appreciate and they didn’t charge me for the door which was nice as well but the whole night was just a disaster, I really hope that that lunatic employee was fired because it casts a bad light on the entire hotel and it’s not a bad place at all, all of the other employees were very nice and helpful, but sadly one bad egg ruins the...

Overall great! Small rooms but an excellent place to cool down and get a good night's sleep.

Had an odd first impression during my stay - the guy at the desk was very distracted by a video call when I checked in, and he got my name wrong even though I handed him my ID with my name obviously printed on it. He checked me into the wrong room! It had someone else's neatly organized clothes on the shelves. Thankfully no one was in there at the time! He did not believe me at first and argued it was definitely my room but maybe had not been cleaned, then he re-checked my name on his list, and we were good to go. I was so relieved that my actual room was still available, and it had been cleaned.

Apart from that, this was a great place to stay. As others mentioned, the rooms are small. Not like hotel small, like cruise ship small. However, the room was clean and was kept very clean during my week-long stay, the bed was comfortable, the shower had good water pressure, the WiFi worked well even for streaming TV shows on my laptop, and the AC was AMAZING. I was in the area for a conference, and talking to other travelers, I learned that even some modern hotels with AC did not cool down the rooms very much. However, at this hotel, you can crank that AC and get true relief from the Paris heat. Excellent blackout curtains too.

There is a breakfast area downstairs, which I did not get to try, but there's also a little terrace with chairs on the top floor, which I very much enjoyed. The views of the botanical garden are lovely.

To counterbalance the weird first impression, I accidentally booked my stay one night short, and the woman who was working the desk at that time was incredibly kind and helpful and somehow rearranged things so I could stay one extra day. Actually, apart from that first guy, everyone at the front desk was friendly and helpful, and I felt at ease and comfortable here. I don't speak even passable French, and that was no problem for the staff.

Accessibility: The stairs were a spiral staircase, and the elevator can only fit two adults who like each other very much (it was a tight squeeze for myself and two rolling suitcases). I thought it might be difficult for travelers who needed to corral small children or for travelers who have, or are assisting someone with, any mobility issue.

The neighborhood is obviously fantastic. Apart from everything you're probably looking at for touristy things to do, I loved being a five minute or less walk from a laundromat, a pharmacy, a metro station, a good patisserie, and I really liked the restaurant right across the street too. The Grand Mosque nearby does a great ladies-only sauna that's fairly cheap! Easy walk to Sorbonne University too.

I think most hotels in this area have tiny rooms, so I can't really count that as a negative. I would definitely...

My main reason for wanting to leave a review is to warn other people who might stay here to ensure you get a receipt when you pay the city tax. My partner and I checked in on Wednesday with a receptionist who told us we could either pay the city enforced tourist tax there on check in or on check out (44 euros), to which we decided to pay there on the spot with card. |Then early this morning we checked out with the night receptionist who asked us to pay the tax. We explained we had paid it on check in to which he very rudely gestured at our documents and said "there's no record of you paying here". We absolutely were not going to pay twice so we insisted we had, and luckily remembered my partner had left the receipt of card payment in the hotel room. They had to run back upstairs to retrieve the receipt to give to the receptionist. After which he didn't say a word to us, no apology whatsoever, or even at the bare minimum asking how our stay was etc, he just gestured we were done after trying to get us to pay twice. It's absolutely ridiculous we would have had to pay twice if we hadn't had the receipt and it is totally the hotel's responsibility to mark this correctly - we also couldn't believe how rude the receptionist was. Despite that, as we were leaving, my partner, still having basic manners, thanked him and told him to have a nice day to which he didn't even look up from his desk where he was watching personal videos on his phone blaringly. So if you choose to pay at the start like us, make sure you keep evidence for when they try rudely make you pay twice!|Other than that, the staff was a real mixed bag as others have said. That male night receptionist left a real dampner on our stay and we couldn't believe how we had gotten treated, while other staff members we saw throughout the day would also be on their phones 24/7 and not acknowledge us whenever we walked by. The man who initially checked us in and the breakfast staff were friendly.|In terms of the hotel, the rooms were very small, which we didn't personally mind as we were only there for a couple of days and they were cleaned daily which was nice. We also enjoyed the location which had lots of nice restaurants around and also incredibly close to a metro that you can take to go into more central Paris easily. |We said we would probably have stayed again before our experience this morning but now after that unfortunately I don't think we...