LH Franz Betsy had decided we should meet at a Brioche Dorée, a kind of a quick-bite coffee shop in Terminal 2E. (I was to bump into Brioche Dorée again during our trip. It’s a chain of shops, and they’re all over the place.) Arriving before her, I found the place and ordered a coffee and chocolate éclair “sur place” (to eat in). It was my first experience speaking French to French people in France, and guess what? It worked!
Our first task was to find an ATM machine for some pocket cash in Euros. Then to the Roissybus, which Betsy had taken when she was in Paris ten years earlier. €24 for the two of us to downtown Paris. The bus stop near L’Opera Garnier is a short 10 minute walk to the hotel. Mercifully, although we were early for check-in, our room was ready.
It was adequate for the two of us. Trompe l’oeil painting of a slightly ajar ornate 18th century era door on the wall behind the twin beds gave the impression of a slightly larger space. Very classy.
In the bathroom, I encountered a toilet where the tank is completely enclosed in the wall. Probably common outside the USA, but nothing I’ve ever seen before. I found myself wondering how one might replace a defective flush valve in this thing, something I’ve had to do in every bathroom in every place I’ve ever lived. I poked and prodded and looked under and around. Was there a panel in the wall? A lever to pull? Perhaps it was accessible from the other side of the wall?
“Mom! What’re you doing?”
“Nothing, really.”
A little balcony overlooked a small courtyard with artificial turf, some tables and chairs, and whimsical statues, including one of a big red alligator. Little ashtrays on the tables told us this was a designated smoking area, accessible through glass doors to the dining area.
As to how she picked this place, Betsy described spending an entire afternoon searching hotel booking sites, creating a custom web of filters: The hotel needed to be close to tourist destinations, but a sufficient distance away to provide respite. It needed to be highly rated, but not too expensive. It needed to have, in order: Air conditioning, elevator, a 24-hour front desk, private bathroom, large-enough beds for two adults (several of the places she looked at had beds sized at 31×79”, which had her scrambling for a tape measure). It had to have free WiFi. A free breakfast and airport shuttle would be nice.
The top three she found were “boutique” hotels, part of the well rated Astotel chain in and around Paris. (All of them had twin beds at least 35” across.) We settled on Hotel Malte, in the 2nd arrondissement and close to the Metro. The “Superior” sized room was a little larger than the smallest room with 216 square feet. There was a tiny desk in the corner and enough space for us to pass each other on our way to and from the bathroom. It seemed small, compared to some of the hotels we had stayed at in mid-size American cities. But a quick search of hotel rooms in American cities shows that when comparing apples to apples, rooms in Northeast American center cities tend to be a only little bigger.
