Hilton Paris La Défense, Paris, France

Landing in Paris at around 7am I was heading to my hotel, the Hilton Paris La Défense, via the RER – 2 trains with a interchange at Châtelet – Les Halles for the onward train to La Défense – all up probably 75 minutes. I was hoping that I could check in early to get some shut eye after the flight from Hong Kong and I struck it lucky in that my room became available just as I was checking in around 10am.

Hilton Paris La Défense, Paris, France

If you’ve been to Paris you’ll know that La Défense is a little out of the city, but not too far. RER takes around 10 minutes, and from memory the Paris Metro was around 20 minutes to get into the city. Not too bad.

If you are at the Arc de Triomphe looking down the Champs-Élysées then if you do a 180° turn you will see the Grande Arche at La Défense. So not too far away but definitely a train ride anywhere.

The hotel is in the CNIT building.

Anyway, now that you know where the hotel is, what was it like?

I had a room that was reasonable size with a desk area behind the bed head. The view was out over the La Défense ‘common’, for the want of a better term. I was on the third floor and heard no noise.

Internet was supplied via Wifi and was decent.

The bed was very comfortable as were the pillows, but being about 8 timezones from home still meant my sleeps were shockingly bad. And that the sun came up around 5am didn’t help me either!

Breakfast was included in the rate I was on which allowed me to have a decent feed, including pastries and freshly cooked waffles, before heading out to explore Paris.

In the evenings you needed to make a decision of whether to train it into Paris, or stay in La Défense. The Tangerine Bar was the hotel bar that I had several drinks at after a day exploring. The menu had a somewhat limited drink and food choice but what you ordered was top notch. One peeve – took a while to get the attention of the serving staff at times.

All round, if your office is out west of Paris it’s a good place to stay but next time I am in Paris I’ll be staying somewhere a little more central.