“Cozy hotel!!!”

We stayed at La coupole for one night in late December. The experience was great! Sure the hotel is small and narrow but it felt really warm and cozy. The owner is very funny and helpful. The hotel is just about : -10 min walk from the train station so we did not need a taxi ride. - 5 min walk fr… more

We stayed at La coupole for one night in late December. The experience was great! Sure the hotel is small and narrow but it felt really warm and cozy. The owner is very funny and helpful. The hotel is just about : -10 min walk from the train station so we did not need a taxi ride. - 5 min walk from the sanctuaries so we were able to re-visit late at night. - 5 min from city center so it was no trouble at all to find places to eat (considering that most of the hotels and restaurants near the sanctuaries are closed this time of year )

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“Narrow !............... In more ways then one !!!”

I normally come to Lourdes each year at this time mainly because its so quiet and peaceful hardly a soul about with nearly everything closed in and around the Sanctuaries area including the hotels you really can have your own space, no queuing for the Grotto, sometimes I am the ONLY person down the… more

I normally come to Lourdes each year at this time mainly because its so quiet and peaceful hardly a soul about with nearly everything closed in and around the Sanctuaries area including the hotels you really can have your own space, no queuing for the Grotto, sometimes I am the ONLY person down there at the Grotto early morning which is wonderfully peaceful so you can just switch off from the world outside and find true peace it's wonderful. So as my normal place of stay was closed due to being flooded out last October when the Gave broke it's banks I obviously looked elsewhere, I made 3 different and separate bookings over a 2 week period but ALL 3 came back stating they would be closed.......... So I ended up staying at the Hotel la Coupole. The hotel is situated at the top end of the Boulevard de la Grotte just below the Av. General Baron Maransin and around a 10 minute walk from the rail station with the gates and entrance to the Sanctuaries a further 5 – 6 minutes walk down the the Boulevard de la Grotte. Looking from the front of the hotel it looks a reasonable frontage but as you go through the hotel entrance into this very short and narrow corridor to a small reception desk, this really sets the scene for the whole layout of the Hotel la Coupole, the lift (elevator) is just immediately behind the reception desk, on exiting the lift you will find that the hotel is very narrow in depth, along with very narrow short corridors, this does not help the sound situation as the sound will carry along these short corridors as it does from other rooms, the room opposite mine I could hear every word of their conversation each morning from 06.00 until they went down for breakfast. Breakfast is taken on the first floor, it's not the biggest breakfast you will ever have but the usual basic you would expect in France, Italy etc, being bread, jams, orange juice, coffee, but enough to get the day started. The rooms themselves are also on the small side, the one I stayed in had recently been refurbished and was indeed nice and clean and comfortable, but then again I was just ONE person, the room was a double and I would say that it could be a bit claustrophobic for TWO people, but then again the bathroom was indeed even smaller in scale and I mean small with a very, very narrow shower. (Please see the attached photos bearing in mind that these photos were taken with an ultra wide-angle lens) The entrance to the shower was a half-sliding door, so if you were an-ex rugby player or a serious food lover getting in and out of the shower could be a little problematic, so being on the SLIMMER side of life would be a great advantage. But I must say the rooms were plain but nicely decorated, one point I would like to raise is that the daily cleaning was not 100%. One other point I would like to add is that the gentleman who was running the hotel, even with his very limited English, was very polite and, when possible, very helpful he seemed a very nice genuine person. Would I stay at the Hotel la Coupole again ? Well if my first choices were open I doubt it, but if I had too knowing what I know now after staying there yes I would, because there IS, and I know this from experience, a vast amount of hotels in Lourdes who do not come anywhere near this for politeness and cleanliness. Chris Leavy. Independent Traveller with 3 credits in The Rough Guide Travel Books. (France, Turkey and China.)

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