Our stay at Victorian House took place from Christmas Day to New Years Eve. While we immensely enjoyed the facility and LOVED our room, our time frame there had benefits and disadvantages as well.
Benefits: The House was practically deserted, so we pretty much had the run of the place. Which is a plus! This was probably due to the time frame of our visit. VERY quiet.
The Victorian House is beautiful, spotlessly clean, and close to the French Quarter...just turn the corner and you are there! Very convenient! It's one of the better B&B's I have stayed at where the property is concerned.
Restaurants abound, in all price ranges from two doors down to the entire city.
Laundromat facility right across the street, and it's a really NICE one at that. Nice tables and chairs, you can eat there, watch television or read, etc. Just don't leave your clothes there unattended, we were told.
There are dozens of available cabs all day and night directly across the street. If you want to rent a car, call any car rental and they will come right away and pick you up and get you situated. Very convenient!
They have a nice selection of New Orlean's themed movies, which really gets you in the mood for your visit.
Benjamin, the proprietor, was wonderful and the staff was very polite.
We had the Chantilly Room, at the front of the second floor, which boasts a wonderful balcony and a lovely view of Louis Armstrong Park. I really loved this room! There is plenty of storage to unpack and forget you are just a visitor, and feel like a resident!
We took advantage of the balcony a few times and had a quiet dinner out there.
The room is nicely decorated, with 'six over nine' windows that raise up and disappear into the casing, allowing you to walk through onto the balcony. 12 foot ceilings throughout the entire house help with the air flow. Our room had a ceiling fan, and also air conditioning for comfort.
The bath is roomy and features a lovely clawfoot tub, which is one of the reasons I booked in this facility. However, if this is why YOU are considering this facility, please know that there is not a lot of water pressure. The hot water took forever to arrive in the pipes and you better be fast and quick with your shower, difficult to accomplish with the low water pressure.
Forget about luxuriating in the tub. There's no easy way to keep the water in, and will take forever to fill, and the hot water will run out long before this happens. I was terribly disappointed about this.
This IS a very old house with probably the same bathing issues it's always had. If you want a historically accurate Victorian experience bathing in a claw foot tub, you'll get it here. But you'll want to spend more time in the French Quarter than the tub, so ultimately, it's not that big of a deal.
Also contributing to the Victorian experience is the lack of telephones...none in the rooms. That I actually enjoyed...in this time of cellular phones, there's really no need for a guest room phone. But if you really need a phone, with a land line, there's one in the parlor.
You can bring your own food and drink there to store in the kitchen refrigerator. However, there are no cooking supplies available other than a microwave...no pots, pans, etc. But you can heat things up and put them on a plate and enjoy them in your room, the courtyard, etc.
The Victorian House has a lovely, charming courtyard, where we enjoyed our breakfast and a newspaper.
Breakfast is basic, consists of a choice of two dry cereals, two types of delicious bread for toasting, milk, orange juice and coffee.
The disadvantages: Being that it was Christmas time, and therefore possibly Christmas vacation for any employees they may have, led to what was sketchy housekeeping services.
No one visited our room the first three days of our visit, so we made the bed, took our trash down ourselves, along with glasses, etc. Unfortunately, the garbage had also piled up in the kitchen, the waste can, only able to hold so much, which was an eye-sore.
Breakfast was set out occasionally, and we were advised that if it wasn't set out, to just go in the kitchen and help ourselves to whatever we wanted.
That was nice, but 'being at home and doing it ourselves' wasn't exactly what I thought I was paying for. The brochure states housekeeping services, and breakfast services, but these were not available to us save for a small portion of our visit.
Housekeeping services suddenly came to life on Monday morning, when we received clean sheets, a nicely made bed, trash removed from room and clean towels and breakfast accomodations set out.
Another concern is security. The kitchen and dining room doors to the courtyard remained unlocked all day and night. The morning we left, at 5:30 am, the front door was left wide open to the street and the gate in front of the door also left wide open.
Someone had come into the house around 5am, yelling in the downstairs hallway about having to come in so early and then went into the downstairs guestroom. We assumed it was she who left the front door wide open...and we were glad it wasn't left wide open all night long. It's dark at 5am in December. The house well lit throughout the first floor, it was obvious from the street the door was left open. An invitation from scurrilous scoundrels to waltz in undeterred. Thank goodness no one did.
The Victorian House faces Rampart Street, which is NOT the best street in town (not that ANY street in New Orleans is). While this person leaving the door open was a concern to us, we hope this was an isolated incident and glad it happened when we left for the benefit and safety of any other guests still in the house. If we hadn't been leaving at that ungodly hour, who knows who might have come in with everyone asleep.
Bourbon Street being so close, and people imbibing too much and not being careful about locking up behind them is probably somewhat common in the Quarter. Something we never thought of when planning to stay in New Orleans. While not something to really concern oneself with when staying in a typical hotel, the homelike residence of a B&B is very different, and we have to trust our fellow guests to behave as we would. I guess sometimes they don't.
Nothing is perfect in this world, so other than the housekeeping and security incidents, we definitely had a nice time at Victorian House, and would recommend this to others. If you are planning your visit during holiday times, just be sure to communicate your expectations to the proprietor and I am certain he will accomodate you.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC