Hotel Milton (ex Gis Hotel)

The GIS is a good, basic two star hotel on the east side of Paris with three items to recommend it. It has free parking if you are driving, the RER A train is a block away for access to central Paris and there is a large shopping center (Auchon supermarket) nearby. The hotel gets a lot of German tour buses on the weekend and low end group Asian tourists the rest of the tme. Nothing really special about this place except for the items noted above. The neighborhood is a bit dodgy, but not scary. They have a good website with access maps and instructions on how to get there on the Metro and RER. If you are driving into Paris from the east, the location is very good to avoid driving in central Paris. The management was very accomodating to me, let me leave my car there for a couple of days after I checked out before my son flew in to Paris to pick it up and they let me use the refrigerator in the storage room to keep cold drinks and snacks.

Coming from South Africa the neighbourhood is not scary at all. It is not centre of Paris, but it is cheap and fine just to sleep. Very close to the RER and easy to get to centre of Paris. Rooms are not great but for a few nights they are fine. Who wants to spend time in a room in Paris in anyway??? Have been there twice and will go back. The money one save on accommodation is worth it. The breakfast is not what it used to be, but that is optional.

The hotel is located on a tiny street outside Zone 3 which is difficult to locate by car. The RER is right by but that also means that you can't go out at night unless you want to hire a taxi. The neighbourhood is mediocre at best, very dimly lit at night, a couple of people asked us for money at night, quite scary. I joined a tour group and that's the only reason that we stayed at this particular hotel. The tour company eztravel in Taiwan stated that it is a 3 star hotel or equivalent but it is not. The hotel rooms are smelly and they have a "bath tube" the size of a water basin, so the bathroom will be flooded if you turn on the water for more than a few minutes. There was no heat in the bathroom so it was freezing whenever we showered. Hot water was not available after 11pm. The closet was inside the bathroom so we ending up keeping most of our coats inside the suitcase. Breakfast was equally bad. Stale bread with some rice soup and it cost 6 Euros. Coffee from a mutifunctional coffee machine. I never imagine one can get bad coffee in Paris but evidentally, you can. It would be nice if our tour company has told us the truth that it is more of a smelly youth hostel, so that we can make other travel arrangements, but we were douped. There are no good cafe or restaurant nearby, only some Greek sandwich place which charge you 5 - 7 euros for a plate. Drinks are extra.