Attractive hotel with lovely courtyard. Great location--a few feet from the metro makes getting around Paris easy. Large size bathrooms for a European hotel. Friendly and helpful staff, let us check out hours later at no charge. I would definitely stay here again. Walking distance to Plaza Bastille and the great restaurants and thriving nightlife. We got a great deal at priceline.

Les Jardins was part of a Paris package we booked over the long Thanksgiving holiday. We enjoyed the hotel enough that we plan to return if/when we return to Paris.

Fellow Americans: If you have never travelled to Europe before, revise your expectations. A four-star hotel in Europe is not the same as the four-star hotel in the US. You are not staying at the Ritz or Four Seasons. If you want the George V, pay the George V prices. It also helps to do a little research about the place you are going. For example the French do not USE washcloths. Bring your own if it's that important to you. We did!

Rant over, on to the review.

The hotel is well situated one block removed from the Rue de Beaumarchais (which leads to the Place de la Bastille in one direction and the Place de Republique in the other). It is in a quiet residential area, yet there are cafes, restaurants, and shops all within a very short walk (pick a direction, go, and there you are) There are also metro stops a very short distance in either direction, and busses available (we found the Paris bus/metro system to be exceptionally efficient).

We were greeted warmly and in flawless English, and checked in efficiently. We arrived well ahead of the 3 pm check-in but were able to secure our room immediately anyway (helps that we were travelling in low season). We were told to ask for anything we wished and they would make it happen ... and they indeed did, from requesting extra towels to looking up information and locations on the Internet for us. We found the staff to be accommodating, friendly and easy to deal with.

The decor is a bit schizophrenic, with the lobby area being quite modern and the courtyard/rooms being quite conservative in decor.

The hotel consists of a number of buildings opening up onto a courtyard. We were placed in the Eiffel building on the 6th floor. Our room was clean, comfortable and roomy by European standards. The bed consisted of two singles made into a double, and was very comfortable with clean linen and two pillows each - one soft polyester fill and one firmer feathers. Since we are a bit fussy about our pillows I thought it was great we had a choice. Soft Pillow Woman was able to exchange with Firm Pillow Man and both were happy.

The bathroom was marble and flawlessly clean. The toiletries were simple and I would recommend bringing your own shampoo as I found the shampoo provided a bit drying. The hair dryer is rather old style and one hopes to dry one's hair before it gets too hot to hold, but it is still better than lugging your own.

We had a large closet with plenty of hangers and cubbies for clothing storage. The end tables by the bed also had cubbies to accommodate pills, vitamins, books, etc.

We had a small kitchenette with a two burner hot plate, small toaster oven, mini fridge and mini dishwasher, and plates/cups/silver for two. We believe the small kitchenette saved us many Euro in meals out. We ate most breakfasts self-prepared in the hotel, since as Americans we prefer more than a cup of coffee and a croissant for breakfast especially in preparation for a busy day of sightseeing. I recommend going down the street to the Shopi which was a good size little supermarket with plenty of delicious choices. For about 40 Euro we stocked up on pate, cheese, ham, baguettes, fruit, Bon Maman cookies, salad fixings with Spanish tomatoes and French radishes, cornichons, dijon mustard, vinaigrette, sugar cubes and a small carton of milk for our coffee in the morning (we brought single serving nescafe with us), as well as a 1.50 Euro 2 liter bottle of Coke Light to feed our jones for same (rather than pay 7 Euro for a serving in a cafe). Everyone at the Shopi was helpful and gracious, particularly the young woman who overheard us discussing the cheese choices and helped us pick some excellent cheeses, in English. I would recommend also picking up a small bottle of dish liquid, as we ended up washing our dishes in a few drops of shampoo.

As a side recommendation if you spend a total of 1-2 Euro on jars of cornichons and dijon mustard you have a lovely little inexpensive gift to give to friends/family when you return.

Another side recommendation is to download the free Louvre and D'Orsay tours as well as the walking tours from Rick Steve's site in mp3 format for your player or Ipod, they were excellent. I would also highly recommend the Bus #95 tour as detailed by Rick Steve's in his Paris 2007 guidebook. We gave ourselves just as good a city tour for 1.40 Euro as you can buy for 60 Euro from a tour company. But we found the best part of Paris was just wandering the streets arm-in-arm, stopping in at local cafe's, buying some beautiful little edible works of art from a local patisserie, immersing oneself in the sights, sounds, and smells (for good or for bad) of Paris.

To continue our hotel review, we did find the French tend to keep everything really HOT indoors, and ended up sleeping with the balcony door wide open (in late November!). This wasn't limited to just our hotel, we were even far too hot on the Air France trip over, and just about everywhere we went. But that's a nit that can be easily overcome. If we want things to be like in the US, we'll travel in the US.

We enjoyed all facets of the hotel enough that we will return to it.

I hope this review has been helpful to those reading.

My wife and I met my parents in Paris for a one-week, Thanksgiving getaway and had a wonderful stay at Les Jardins du Marais. We stayed in Room 211 (a junior suite in Renoir buildinng) and my parents stayed in room 157 (a junior suite in Gauguin building).

When I did my research I wanted a hotel that provided a quiet retreat in a noisy city. This hotel did not disappoint. Both the Renoir and Gaugin buildings are away from rue Amelot and were so quiet you wouldn't know you were in the city. We did hear some Paris police car sirens, but were very faint in the background and never effected our sleep.

Likes: Convenience to the Saint-Sebastien Froissart metro stop, easy walking distance to Bastille and Place des Vosges, you could walk to Notre Dame, the kitchenette and refrigerator, the courtyard, the kind staff, comfortable beds, clean rooms, hot showers, room safe usage for valuables at no extra charge, felt very safe walking in the neighborhood.

Tips for a better stay: Leave 2 euros on your pillow for the chambermaid each morning (for only a few bucks we felt our room was well taken care of, our room was always very clean and the dishes were done for us), respect the staff and they'll respect you (don't expect the hotel to have all the conveniences of a 4 star American hotel. You're in France. If there is something you would like ie... ice bucket or iron, just call the front desk and ask nicely and they will take care of your every need.) I found that if you are friendly toward the staff, they will go out of their way to be friendly to you, greeting you everytime they see you. To the Market-As you walk out the front door of the hotel facing rue Amelot, turn left and walk about two blocks on the left will be a well-stocked market. To the Boulangerie-From the market cross rue Amelot and walk thru the passageway to Blvd. Beaumarchais, the local boulangerie will be on your left. They have inexpensive croissants and goodies for breakfast. To the Saint-Sebastien Froissart metro stop, walk out the front door of the hotel, turn right on rue Amelot, make the first left then a quick right and there it is. There are also several restaurants and bars on the same block that looked nice, but we never had time to try.

Some things about the hotel that people may not like is the room temperature control (there is none), it is an old building so there is no thermostat in the room. There is a radiator heating system that got the room warm, but the air conditioners were portable cooling units. We were there in November so we didn't need it, but I would question the ability of the unit to cool the whole room. We opened the window when we wanted to cool the room down. The French are a little more open about nudity on television, so if you have children, don't let them change the TV channels. There is a pay TV channel with XXX nudity around Channel 20 that previews the movie then puts up a graphic that asks you if you want to purchase it. We didn't watch much TV, but when we did it was either CNN or BBC World News, the only English language channels available. My parents had to request that their room be vacuumed once and returned to their room one day at 4pm to find it not made up yet. Maybe the cleaning staff was just shorthanded that day. The rest of the time their room was made up nicely, as was ours. The hotel does not have wash cloths or alarm clocks, maybe it's a cultural thing, so bring your own. Don't forget your power converter and power cord adaptors for France.

Overall, a great experience. The manager of the hotel actually escorted us to our transportation for the airport when we were leaving. You can tell that they want your business and want you to return and we will.

OK, the lobby's very nice (like a 4-star) and the cobblestoned passage is beautiful....and when you can catch a minute when a huge flock of tourists with crazy requests isn't checking in or out .... the staff is helpful. But, the rooms and separate annexes are not up to 4-star-par. We stayed in a double room and an executive room and both had stained yellow-gold carpet and a very unsightly kitchenette right next to the bed.... The hallways had cut-up carpet pieces and were decorated a la Ramada Inn and we tried for 3 days in-a-row to have them change our stained sheets to no avail. So, I guess if you stay in the lobby, it's a 4-star...if you plan to use the rooms...not so much.