Hôtel Des Princes

The location is good right on the border between Evian-Les-Bains and Amphion-Les-Bains. Evian is a little over a mile on a busy roadway. The properties to the left (if you are looking at the Lake) appear to be abandoned hotels that are boarded up, so Des Prince Hotel is a little oasis in itself. You are in a good spot for day trips to Montreux, Geneve, Nyon, Yvoire etc. The restaurant on sight is fantastically situated literally right on the lake. You can dip your toes in the water from your dinner table and feed the two swans and ducks that prop their heads up on the pavement looking for scraps. The lake access and grounds around the hotel are really nice. The lake was warm enough to swim in and that was delightful! We had a twin double room w/ a balcony that had a fantastic view of the lake---but not the mountain range. If you want to see the mountains and the lake you likely need a room on the Swiss side --Geneve, Lausanne or Montreux. This was my misunderstanding and NOT misleading advertising or photos etc. by Des Prince. The room was a good size, the beds were comfortable and the bathroom looked renovated, but retrofitted as the building is quite old. You could hear the lake lapping against the shore at night. Parking was available and free.

If you are tall, you have to sit sideways on the toilet. Poor or cheap retrofit bathroom renovation. BUSY single lane roadway in front. We had a corner room with a side balcony & lake view, but even with the balcony doors closed you could hear the road. If you request a direct lake view it might offer more sound protection. If they offered a fan that would provide background noise so you could sleep with the door open. Because the rooms are right on the lake and likely the season we were there, there were a lot of BIG spiders that came through the windows and crawled across the ceiling at night. You had two choices: 1) sleep with windows closed, have no spiders, but get hot (no AC) 2) open the windows and sleep with spiders. The ceilings were high so we chose to open windows and survived :)-- I'm not a fan of spiders. They offer in-room instant coffee/tea, but forgot to give us cups after we used our plastic cups once. The lighting in the bathroom could be better. Again because you are on a lake and it is a bit damp, you can smell the paint that was used possibly on a recent renovation. Just an observation, it didn't detract from my stay. You can hear plumbing (toilet flush/shower) from adjacent room. The room gets perfectly dark, except for a piercing blue light on the TV. Unplugging didn't shut it off. I had to find creative ways to block it. Breakfast is only until 9:45 a.m. The staff are very nice and do not rush you out, but it would be nice to just extend the service to 10 a.m. Breakfast is 14 euro per person extra and given the general cost to visit the area it's good value, but they don't actively track, so my final bill showed we took breakfast all four days and we did not. That's 56 Euro charge. They corrected it immediately with no issues once I pointed it out. Staff is nice but exhibit the typical work ethic of Europeans --- work/service is secondary to their lives.

Lakeside room overlooking the lake parking food and staff was good

Nothing