Ok, so we booked this at two weeks notice over new year when there wasn't any availability at nicer boutique hotels in this kind of price range. Also, because it was new year, we ended up paying €440 for three nights which really felt like a lot but at two weeks notice over new year can you really complain about that?

The hotel is on a small side-street that's lined with cheap hotels. I wonder how most of these are booked since they don't show up on the booking engines. It is therefore quiet. Our room was at the back of the hotel and was exceptionally quiet. I slept later than at home. The location is good between the Gare de Lyon and the Bastille with cheap eats within two minutes walk and better places 15 minutes away in Marais.

The comments about the wafer-thin walls are, however, true and anyone walking down the corridor or entering their room next door would rattle round our room like they were there with us.

So, what did we get? The room is a standard size for a Paris hotel room (ie small) and the double bed also felt small. But we fitted in it. The room and bathroom were clean. Curious rusty orange colour painted on the walls that made it feel more enclosed and dull than it actually was. If we'd paid €55-€65 a night I'd have been happy.

The wifi was free and worked perfectly. There was a new LG widescreen TV on the wall with digital TV channels for ghost-free picture quality. Staff were friendly on the front desk but we didn't need them for much.

Interestingly, reviewers here do not seem to take the breakfast. We didn't either. There's a simple explanation for this. It runs from 6am-10.30am. About the time we were getting up. I'd have liked to try it but it just finished too early.

As for recommendations, I'm completely neutral. I'd stay again in these circumstances but would try to find somewhere a bit more characterful for this kind of money first.

We arrived Paris by train and left by airplane. The location of the hotel was just great for us : a few minutes walk from the Gare de Lyon where we arrived, and from where we took a bus to the airport. It has plenty of nice restaurants around and is easily accessible by the subway (~5 minutes walk), as several lines pass nearby.

The room was large enough, a tad larger than what Parisian hotels are used to offer. The bathroom was ok as well. All in all, we did not have any issues over our 3 days stay. The air con worked, the Wi Fi worked, the TV worked. It was simply as advertised and a real good value.

We have not tried the breakfast so I cannot comment on this.

I stayed at the Hotel Alexandrie (formerly Tonic Hotel) for 6 nights and had a lovely time. Madame Blot is a lovely lady and will answer any question you might have. Her staff is very courteous too. The hotel is on a quiet street off the busy rue de Lyon. It's a 3-minute walk to the Gare de Lyon and five minutes away from the Bastille area where there are lots of restaurants to choose from. It's my nth time in Paris, and Hotel Alexandrie is one of the nicest and most affordable hotel I've stayed at. Merci Madame Blot!

We arrived at 9.30 at night to a cold and wet Paris after travelling 24 hours from Australia. We had booked 2 rooms, one family room for my husband, me and 2 children and another for my parents. As we booked into reception the receptionist told us there had been a problem with water in our rooms and therefore they weren't available but they would put us up in their sister hotel the aurore just around the corner. He gave us directions to the aurore, but they were all wrong and my husband and I ended up walking all around the streets in the rain trying to find the hotel. Eventually after about 20 minutes we found it. The receptionist at the aurore then told us they had given our rooms to someone else. so we went back to the alexandrie and asked to see the water damaged rooms, but no, he didn't understand all of a sudden. so we went back to the aurore with my elderly parents and two children trudging through the rain with suitcases as bags to the aurore. We had to split up as there was no family room, so I had to sleep with one of our daughters in one room and my husband in another, on a different floor, with our other daughter. The next morning my husband and I went back to the alexandrie and spoke to Laurence the owner, he was very apologetic and said he had a party of american students in the hotel and they had turned up with a larger party than what had booked so he gave them our room,. He offered for us to stay at the aurore or her would change things around so we could have our family room, he also said if we had breakfast in the hotel he wouldn't charge us for the children. We opted to go back to the Alexandrie we all wanted to be in one room. That night while we were all asleep there was someone trying to get into our room and a lot of noise in the hallway, when I got up and told them to be quiet, turns out it was the students and no one had told them that they had moved all of there things to another room. The rest of the stay I am happy to say was uneventful, but not the start to our long anticipated European holiday we wanted.