Pat Phelan: Telecomms DisruptorSubverting telecomms from the edge of industry

Unfortunately I am in Paris alone for two days for a series of meetings and had to write about the Hotel where I am staying.
Firstly its the first hotel where the proprietor Yann-Gabriel Hentschke greeted me at the front door like an old friend accompanied by his two chocolate labradors.
Its a wonderful experience.

“Eclectic” and “hip” may dominate the Paris hotel renaissance, but even they don’t make up the whole picture. My last jigsaw piece falls into place back in the historic center where Le Marais House (a stone’s throw from the city’s oldest house, 3rd,) is carving out a niche all its own. Technically, it’s not quite in the Marais. Nor is it strictly a hotel—more of a cross between a hotel particulier and a prestige bed & breakfast. But it qualifies amply because Yann-Gabriel Hentschke’s meticulously restored interior breaks the mold—and positively exudes attitude.“This was really the bourgeois end of the street. Basically, I recreated a house that never existed,” says Hentschke, who lovingly tracked down the raw materials to transform a derelict shell into a chateau-in-miniature. Ushering me up the finely wrought staircase into a ferny, glass-floored atrium, he points out eighteenth-century Venetian painted doors. There are stone floors, circa sixteen-something, brought back from Poitiers and Tourenne. The fireplaces date mostly from the same era. The result is glorious, right down to the light-play on the Bevilacqua walls, the mahogany-paneled gym-cum-sauna and the four-poster beds. Carefully selected antiques complete the effect, and go some way towards explaining Hentschke’s policy of disclosing the exact location when guests reserve”

A magnificent venue for a trip to Paris, incredibly romantic even though I was on a solo trip, secluded, quiet and in the wonderful 3rd Arrondissement.
I will definitely be heading back, also worth a glance is Yann’s place in Gstadd