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Hotel review – Holiday Inn Montreal Airport

After a superb transatlantic flight with Air Canada, I had a one-night layover in Montreal.

I chose to spend the night at the Holiday Inn close to the airport, using my IHG points.

Shortly before my arrival, I received an e-mail informing me that my booking had been upgraded to a one bedroom suite with a balcony.

The hotel was a short and very easy ride with the hotel’s shuttle, which was sent to collect me after a phone call to the front desk.

My suite was comfortable and well appointed, with a king size bed, living area and kitchen.

There was also a balcony, which I found convenient despite the rather cold weather.

Breakfast, which was included in my booking, was pretty reasonable and included cereals, fruit, yoghurt, juice and coffee, as well as a hot selection of bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs, potatoes and baked beans.

The hotel also has an indoor pool and hot tub, which I was not able to photograph as it was in use for most of the evening.

Photographs can be found on the hotel website.

The water in the larger pool was a little too cold for my personal preference, so I stuck to the hot tub, which was very pleasant.

Overall, this was a convenient, comfortable and good value option at 22,100 IHG points, booked during a 15% off redemptions sale.

This is a hotel I would happily stay at again.

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Hotel review – Millennium Hotel, Paris CDG

I recently had a two night stopover in Paris between flights.

For such a short time, it didn’t make sense to travel to a city hotel when I could stay at the airport and travel to the city without my luggage for the free day.

For that reason I booked the Millennium Hotel a short distance from the airport.

My arrival was complicated slightly by the fact that CDG is very badly signposted and there is very little information about which shuttles depart from which part of the airport. A quick phone call to the hotel established that this particular bus departs from the bus stops between Terminals 2B and 2D.

A further complication was that the shuttle runs only once per hour, at 5 minutes to each hour. Unfortunately I missed one by around 10 minutes.

However, things improved once I actually got to the hotel.

My room was comfortable and reasonably sized and had everything I needed for a short stay, including tea and coffee making facilities, storage space and a mini fridge.

Some of the furniture was a little battered and scuffed and had seen better days, but this was only a minor cosmetic issue and it certainly didn’t reduce my enjoyment of the stay.

The hotel offers a small indoor swimming pool, which was heated to a pleasant temperature and provided a nice opportunity to relax.

The restaurant offers casual meals in the bar area. I didn’t actually try these and couldn’t get any decent photographs as it was very crowded due to a couple of cancelled flights from CDG.

I did, however, try the buffet breakfast, which at €20 was decent value by European standards. The price included bacon, sausages and eggs, as well as bakery items, cold cuts and unlimited juice and coffee.

Again I couldn’t get any decent photographs due to the number of people at the buffet, but it was a fairly standard hotel buffet and I considered the convenience to be worth the price.

Overall, I feel that this hotel offered a perfectly adequate experience for a short stopover and in a city as expensive as Paris, was reasonably priced at €84 per night, excluding breakfast.

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