Hotel Le Grillon – Ugh!

Strasbourg is the capital of the European Union and home to several important institutions, such as the European Parliament.  When we made our schedule, I had no idea there would be a big parliament session here this week, which made finding accommodations kind of difficult.  After lots of searching (and we did this back in January!) we booked at Hotel Le Grillon, which looked decent and had ok rates.  Now that I’ve arrived, I see why they were one of the few places with vacancy – this is almost as bad as Barbieri Hostel in Madrid!

The first negative – when our travel plans changed and we realized Paul would have to go home at this time, I emailed Le Grillon to see if I could switch to a single room.  They replied “no problem, but [they] couldn’t change my rate since I made an online booking through hostels.com.”  I emailed back asking if I could get a single room w/ensuite, which is the same price as the double room without a private bathroom that we had booked previously.  They replied “none of these rooms are available, but when I get there I can talk to the person at front desk about my room rate.”  Well, when I checked in, I got stuck with the original double room, at the original price!

Second negative – when I got to my room, only one bed was made up.  The other bed had been stripped of its sheets and the blanket was on the floor.  A few minutes after I got there, a lady came to finish “cleaning” the room, and I watched her put fresh sheets on the bed and then take the blanket off the floor and use it to make the bed! Then she wiped down the sink and left.  I’ve decided not to sleep in that bed and hope that the blanket on my bed is clean…

Third negative – I noticed that the desk was dirty, so I wetted one of the towels they provided and started to wipe everything down.  By the time I was done, the towel had gone from white to brown!  I started to wipe part of the floor, but the towel got really gross and I decided it was pointless, I’m just not putting anything on the floor!

Fourth negative – I’m on the fourth floor, which seems to be the attic of the building converted into additional rooms.  As a result, the ceiling is ridiculously low – there’s a sign in the hallway showing a height of only 1.82 metres, and in the room the roof slants so I keep hitting my head and I’m only 5’2!  I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it would be if I was any taller!

I decided to go on TripAdvisor and post a review of this place since I feel so completely misled by their website, and I found a ton of bad reviews!  I wish I had read them back when I was booking, but hopefully my addition will help steer other people away from this place – it really is a dump L