Notes from the Editor.
"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."
Ernest Hemingway - A Moveable Feast
I'm not much into Hemingway, some might say that at 32 I'm not that young, and I've only been in paris for 3 weeks so I've hardly lived here, but I do concur with Monsior Hemingway on this statement.
I will be here for the next month, and why not! It is such an agreeable place, with its cobblestone streets, block after block of beautiful stylish buildings and the cafes, patisseries and boulangeries.
During my first week here I stayed at a no star hotel in Montmartre, suitable for the very budget traveller, not far from the Moulin Rouge. While Montmartre is not the bohemian enclave it used to be, the hilly back streets are still a special place that any other city would find hard to match.
This hotel was so budget that my room had no shower, and no access to a shower. I hesitated staying there, but then I saw the view from the window of the Basilique du Sacre Coeur and decided to stay. What the hell - go a few days without a shower and see what its like to be as dirty as a Frenchman.
This hotel is an old school Euro Hotel - the last of a dying breed. No elevators and shared toilets on each floor, with only a few rooms with showers.
Recently I chanced upon the 1962-63 edition of Europe on 5 dollars a day, by
Arthur Frommer. This book is a fantastic read. It is a time capsule of Europe in the golden age of travel (golden in my opinion). It is well written and the prices are hilarious. $2 hotel rooms in Zurich and $500 return flights from New York to London - staggeringly expensive when you consider you can get a flight today for $300, and this was in the days before credit cards, so travel agents usually arranged 12 monthly payment plans for your big investment.
I have copied an excerpt to highlight the European bath/shower situation:
Baths in Europe: When an American registers at a European hotel and is asked if he wants a private bath with his room, his normal reaction is to answer , "Of course." By so doing, he immediately triples the cost of his hotel bill and yet obtains essentially the same bath he would have had by answering "No." The reason is as follows:
Few Europeans regard a bath or shower as a daily necessity. The usual practice overseas is to start the day with a simple splash in the sink. Because of this, very few rooms in a European hotel are equipped with private bath; and consequently, the rental charge for those rare rooms with bath is unusually high. I know of a large eight-story hotel in Munich with over a hundred rooms, of which only nine have private baths. The rooms without bath in this hotel cost a reasonable $2 a night per person; the few rooms with bath cost $6 and up. The story is the same all over Europe - baths cost money.
This doesn't mean, however, that you must forego baths to travel inexpensively in Europe; you need only know where to take them. Virtually every hotel in Europe maintains a room per floor solely as a private bath. To use that room, you ring for the chambermaid. She draws the bath, piles out large towels for your use, and you then pad across the hall in robe and slippers and splash away. In Germany, this costs one mark (25c). In Italy it costs about 35c. By adding this cost to your hotel bill, you can have a room and bath for $2.35, instead of a room with bath for $6. The room is the same in either case. The saving results from the simple act of walking across the hall.
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Ahhh, bring me back to the days when a chambermaid draws you a bath and piles up large towels for you.
I'm renting a room now in an apartment in the 17th Arrondissement and a short stroll from the Arc de Triomphe (for those who want to know). Paris has a large network of homestay agencies that will find a room for you in a home/apartment. It oftens works out
as cheap as a hostel and it gives you a glimpse into how people live inside those magnificent apartments that line the streets of Paris.
My room is on the 6th floor, which is in the roof. I get my own balcony and a commanding view of Paris. Being that is is an old apartment block, it - like the old hotels - has limited showering facilities. I have to go down to the 3rd floor each day to the apartment of the man who owns the room. There he has a little shower built into the corner of the kitchen. His kitchen is mine to use as well and I have a key to come and go as I please.
More later,
James.
