Hotel Spa - Au Charme Rabelaisien

The rooms are gorgeous and beautifully updated. We had the windows open and it was quiet. We enjoyed wine (that we purchased from the owner) in the courtyard each evening. The lift was a nice bonus. We did not eat breakfast at the hotel but went out for pastries each day. Enjoyed the coffee in the room, as well as the refrigerator. Great on-site parking for our large vehicle. The pool looked nice but it was closed for the season.

Very friendly and helpful staff. Beautifully renovated 1700's era building. Close to downtown without being noisy. Restaurant recommendedations were excellent. On-site parking is available and a must if you have a car. Nice breakfast is an option. Has mini fridge, nesspesso, and kettle.

We LOVED our entire experience at this hotel. The staff were warm and welcoming. The room was LOVELY, charming and clean. Great amenities. Adorable building and courtyard. We had a view of the Amboise chateau from our suite. We will be back!

Thank you to the staff at Hotel Au Charme Rabelaisien for a perfect few days in Amboise before going to Paris. After entering the beautiful lobby area, our first moment in the hotel was drinking a glass of wine in the beautiful courtyard. This became the daily ritual before getting ready for dinner! The two staff we met were so friendly, helpful with restaurant suggestions, transportation and excursion advice and arranging, and just really nice to talk to during our stay. Our room on the top floor, with it's own staircase, was perfect - the bed was so comfortable, the room was peaceful and extremely spacious to relax with a drink. It was nice walking down the stairs and throughout the hotel as it's a beautiful space to be in decorated with art, colour and historical ambience. We loved breakfast each morning. We prefer this hotel's style of fewer but nicely laid out items of higher quality. Fruit, coffee, cheeses, jams, bread, the sweet courtyard and friendly staff - perfect start to each morning. Amboise was the highlight of our trip to France and our experience at Hotel Au Charme Rabelaisien made it exceptional.

This hotel looks very nice in the photos but in person it is not how it looks at all. In our room, which was either a prestige terrace or a prestige garden, the carpet was dirty, the shower floor had some black grout (mold) and our terrace was dirty and had mold on the door mat. Our friends room was worse, it smelled bad, the air conditioner was not working, it had no WiFi, both of the rooms were not pretty like depicted on the internet. The grounds are very unkept, lots of dead plants and in much need of a clean up. I do not understand how this property has such a high rating. The staff is rude and offers very little help in fixing anything. Read the negative reviews and believe them. We paid a lot for these rooms and they were absolutely not worth it. Also look at the hotel managers replies to all the negative reviews. She is very defensive and blames everything on the reviewer. She says she’s not surprised at all by your review and then points out all their positive reviews. She will do it with this one too I’m sure. They take no responsibility at all for any short comings. A good business will apologize for any problems, invite you to come back and hopefully try to fix the issues. I would absolutely not recommend staying here.

Let's start with the positive things: Au Charme Rabelaisien is a beautiful old boutique hotel with nice and big rooms, it's conveniently located in the city center but it's still quiet and you have a parking place on the spot. The breakfast is also good compared to the usual French breakfast in other hotels. What spoiled our stay was the fact that the heating in the bathroom did not work and it's not nice to take a shower in a cold room with November temperatures outside. When I informed the reception I was told on the first day that we just don't know how to switch the heating on. On the second day they realized that it was really broken and all I got was ' luckily it's not so cold these days, so just leave the bathroom door open and the room will heat up with the bedroom's temperature'. Only that in the bedroom the heating also worked very poorly although we had it full on ... The second thing to warn about is the sauna: You pay 35 Euros for an hour for which you get individual access to the sauna and a jacuzzi in a very tiny room. There is a shower but no opportunity to relax somewhere on a bed, all you have is actually one table with two chairs separated by a door from the breakfast room. And it was cold in that room as well. I would not have bothered writing this review if at our check-out we would have had an excuse, just a simple 'We are sorry for the inconvenience with the heating' would have been enough. But nothing came although I mentioned the issue once more, this was disappointing.