A little explanation in order to properly introduce the new Hotel Lumen: Paris is in another league when it comes to hotels — its enormous volume of tourist traffic combined with its general scarcity of real estate places it in the same pricy bracket as London or Tokyo. Combine that with a generally conservative bunch of hotel decorators — no, we don’t get it either — and you’ve got a pretty solid rule of thumb: you can have an affordable hotel, a stylish hotel, or a conveniently located hotel, but rarely two of those, and almost never all three.
We’d be lying to you if we told you the Lumen belonged in the budget category. But to find a hotel this stylish and modern, located literally steps from the Louvre, is a pretty big deal. And the price is really very much in line with the product: this is a top-flight luxury boutique, whose striking contemporary design fireworks are discreetly hidden behind the facade of a classic Haussmannian townhouse.
The thirty-two rooms and suites vary in size, but they’ve all got views of one kind or another, and all look sharp, in custom-made furnishings and marble or Bisazza-tile bathrooms. And the ace in the hole, to add to the location and the look, is the restaurant: Le Passage Saint-Roch operates under the guidance of the famed cookbook writer Frédérick Grasser Hermé.
author watson@mouselink.net, source www.tablethotels.com