HI Hostel Paris Yves Robert — Hotel in Paris

This review is broken down to make your stay a little less confusing lol

Checkin - When you checkin your private room won’t be active until 3pm. (unless you are in a shared hostel room) and you can leave you luggage in a storage room that’s monitored by a camera.

Breakfast - You have a limited amount of food in which you can grab listed on a piece of paper in the downstairs restaurant. Although it’s free, it’s not a buffet. I do feel that the portions in which you are allowed to take can be rather filling though.

Kitchen - You must ask reception for a keycard that unlocks the kitchen. The cards that you are provided with for your room will not unlock the kitchen. Once you are finished using the kitchen keycard be sure to return it. There is also a fridge that you can keep your food in but I personally wouldn’t recommend it (it stunk inside)

Service/Reception - Most spoke both french and english. Some better than others but overall the reception does speak both. The taller girl was very sweet and helpful when we had an issue with our room as well.

Rooms - Our private room was small but nice. The family size private room comes with a full size mattress and bunk beds. Much more spacious and nicer with better heating and a fan. Also to turn on the main switch for the entire room you must plug in your keycard in a card slot next to the door (looks like an upside down credit card reader) to activate the electricity to the room for your lights to work. They also have a quiet zone on floors 1 - 2 where rooms are located. This is so that people are loud in the hallways or partying in their rooms which makes this place very quiet and excellently sound proofed.

Location - This spot is great if you want to be close to Gare Du Nord station. This made it easy for us to checkout and walk to the train station to head up to the airport. A lot of people mention this place is sketchy but in my opinion it just seems like the area is a bit more run down. We still seen school field trips, parents teaching their kids how to ride bikes, groups of older people dancing in front of the building (dancing in a way that’s good for your health) and truly nothing that concerned us. I would say if you are a single female staying here then maybe consider taking the taxis when leaving or finding another place that makes you feel safer.

Showers/water - The shower design is a bit odd to us because you have to press a button to temporarily run the shower till it stops then do it again. Makes the shower a bit tedious but i think this place is all about conserving energy and reducing costs in efficient ways and it’s a brilliant idea but weird to get used too lol. The sinks act in a similar way too.

Checkout - Sheets, Blanket, and pillow cases go in marked hampers in hallways when leaving to drop off kay cards to reception.

My Final Thoughts - Would I stay here again? Yes, if i was looking for a private room i totally would. The price is very good and so is the location (in my opinion lol) As far as looks the green floor is just too much lmao. But aside from green floor, the fresh wood look and the building itself is gorgeous. With great and friendly staff this place is definitely a place i’d revisit again and...

I am very sorry about how long this review is but it’s worth reading This place is worst than it looks in the pictures and it isn’t 4 stars or good; not even worth a star I was looking forward to a trip with my my friends in a nice and comfortable accommodation however, this is not what I had. The rooms were small and cramped especially for four people to stay at. The floor was dirty and unclean with dust filling up the corners of the room. At one point my feet was itchy. The plug sockets, which were unbelievably unsecured came out when I tried to get my adapter out. Every night, my four friends were looking out of the window with a group of men sitting on the bench looking like they were drug dealing. The beds were dirty and uncomfortable and I kept tossing and turning. The pillows (which were very old and uncomfortable and need to be replaced), we had to clear the sheets. Another issue was the shower, it kept flooding just as the temperature of the water changed. Even worse, there was nothing to hang the towels and clothes up. Unpractical, the toilets weren’t even in the rooms so, we had to share the toilets with the rest of the students on our school trip. During this trip we all found out we had lost a few of our belongings like my necklace and my friend’s neck pillow which led to her having no comfort on the coach journey back home. Just to add we found a lot of strangers’ forgotten clothes dumped behind the lockers. The food was repulsive, unappetising and gone-off. Dishes and cutlery were dirty with little little choice of food. The first problem was I had no proper food there for almost four days straight because I’m vegetarian ( if you saw a review from Molly you will know) which meant I was ravenous and underfed. The other problem was my other friend is gluten free and she had nothing there despite the teacher told the chefs in French that she was gluten free and didn’t cater for her allergy. The chefs were inexperienced with their jobs but also didn’t speak English so I said “No thank you” to fish and beef and shook my head and then I said “non merci” to both of them but one of the chefs glared at me and gave me fish. I also discovered a hair in my friend’s chicken. The area is also unsafe with dodgy people surrounding the hostel. When the door opened the smell of cigarettes hit you like a brick. Don’t recommend this horrible hostel so don’t arrive here at your destination. Hope this review helped, have a great day, evening and night wherever...

Pros: Neighborhood looks rough but pretty decent, family friendly, toilets recently renovated and decent, good immigrant food nearby.

Cons: No AC, towel charge, metal creaky lockers, really bad showers in rooms, kind of inconvienent metro wise to tourist destinations.

It's a hostel that shows it's age a bit. The rooms are actually massive for a hostel which is surprising, but there are some questionable choices. The beds are very basic and the thin mattress and pillow made for a very uncomfortable night, the bedding is very cheap polyester and made it hard to not sweat. There was a fan switch but it didn't do anything. The lockers are metal school locker type things and are VERY loud, not sure why they went with these instead of a cabinet or something but a bit better, my one also had a loose latch so it took me a while to get it open, I tightened it a bit and it began working again.

The shower in our room was terrible though, surprisingly bad. It's just a room with a very awful shower curtain. There was no shelf or soap dish, and the flooring was pretty old. It looks like there used to be a rack for soap but it pulled out of the wall, and there was some sort of rusy panel above the push button. No towel bar or rack, so you get one hook to hang your towel and any clean clothes, everything else goes on the floor. The fan did not seem to work either which makes me concerned for mold.

The neighborhood is a bit rough but spend more than a few minutes walking around and you realize it's fine! There is some great food nearby and metro stations are 5 and 9 minutes away, plus plenty of bike share bikes are parked around the area. The hostel also attracts a lot of families, there were like 15 kids playing in the lobby at around 10 o'clock, the noise didn't bother me but if you are sensitive to it and tend to go to bed early it might be an issue. It quieted down by 11 though, so no major issue there.

Bring a towel if you are on a budget as well! It is a 3 euro charge if you do not! Staff was very pleasant though which is the saving grace of this hostel, but HI could really do to renovate. Both my stays in Meinenger hostels were in super nice, modern hostels for about the same price, with far better facilities. Was a bit jarring finishing the trip here! If I was younger it might not be a big deal but in my 30's now so ended up...