A Room to Remember
8:01 AM
Last week we came again to another point in our trip where we had to make another big journey across Europe. Thankfully we were a bit more prepared this time and were able to trek from West Dorset in England to near St. Pölten in Austria without any major hassles and without spending major money. We broke it up into three days. First we took a four hour train into Brighton and stayed overnight in a hotel. The next day it was a mad dash (literally as we woke up late) to the train to Newhaven to catch our ferry over to Dieppe, then another two hour train to Paris for a second night in a hotel. The next day was our train from Paris to Stuttgart to St. Polten which had a few breaks in between but ultimately meant just under twelve hours of traveling.
When we travel like this, trains and hotels back to back, we don't usually have many stories to share with you all. Checking in and out of hotel rooms can only be so interesting. Especially since we're traveling on a budget. No seafront, ocean views for us unfortunately. But sometimes there can be fun stories, especially because we're not staying in swanky hotels. Let me tell you the story of the worst hotel room in Paris.
Zach and I aren't against hotels, though we much rather prefer our time spent staying with our hosts, but we just never feel fully comfortable there. It might be partly because we can't really unpack our belongings for a one night stay or that we always seem to get stuck with windows that won't open, but really we just like the personality that comes from staying in a home versus what is essentially a short stay apartment complex. Still we've accepted this necessary evil of hotel stays and genuinely don't expect much from our times spent there, especially since we never pay much for the rooms. Throughout our trip we've maybe stayed in around 10-15 hotel rooms and they have been just fine for us, but there always needs to be one bad apple right?
I should have guessed when we started walking to the hotel that things were going to be weird that night. The hotel was in a prime location for us, right near the metro so when we arrived in Paris we wouldn't have to go far and delightfully near the Gare de L'est where we would get our train at 7:25 am the next morning. Being close to your train locations have been key in our travel experience. You don't want to chance your expensive train ticket on the local metro being on time. But the hotels neighborhood felt like Times Square if you removed all the lights and multiplied the people trying to sell you tickets to a comedy show. Except half of these guys weren't selling anything and were just hanging around. A little odd to see such a busy street corner, one so busy I had to pick up Winry so she wouldn't be stepped on, especially when we walked up a street to our hotel and it was dead silent.
So we walk into the hotel to check-in and start what turns out to be a 25 minute process. The guy managing the front desk is thoroughly confused by Winry and demanded to know if we alerted them we'd be bringing a dog. I lied, saying yes of course I did, and he didn't challenge me but spent a long time squinting at our reservation on the computer. After paying the pet and city tax we were finally permitted to head up to our room on the fourth floor. Here was where we found what we paid $49 for: the first hotel room that was actually smaller than our Brooklyn apartment! We had one sink, one dresser, and one queen bed all within a few cozy inches of each other.
"Well this is fine," I said "all we really need is a bed. I'm going to try and find the bathroom." Since there was no other door inside our room, my only guess was that it was at least on our floor. I studied all the doors with the numbers scratched into them, then the only door without one, then the floor map on the wall. It seemed that the missing number door was the proposed bathroom, but had no handle to open the door. Searching the flight below us, I found a completely new wall in the space where our floors bathroom had been and finally found relief in the floor above us. This bathroom was unfortunately a let down for Zach, as it only had a toilet. No room for a shower there.
We had a spot to lay our heads and successfully found the bathroom, so feeling generally accomplished we met up with Zach's friend Drew (who serendipitously had been visiting Paris for a few days) and handed off our room key to the new front desk guy. After dinner and drinks, we bopped back to the room and quickly passed out, tired from the long day of travel. I could have slept the whole night through if I hadn't been awoken around midnight to the sound of dozens of footsteps on the stairs, on our floor, seemingly everywhere. Our little room, which was located right next to the staircase and probably lacked any real insulation, had no chance in keeping the noise out and I lay awake listening to the parade for the next hour. I could only imagine it was tourists like Zach and I who had chosen this cheap hotel to save money for their own drinks, who were now stampeding to their own little rooms to pass out. At least, I like to think that someone had just drunkenly tried to open our door in the night thinking it was theirs and not for some other reason. Thankfully Winry was all over it. The second their hand tried to turned that locked handle, Winry was barking and growling like she was ten times her size. It was the only time we've ever had that problem and it gave me another reason to be thankful she was along.
We made it through the rest of the night and groggily walked to the train the next morning, unfortunately unable to officially check-out because no one was at the front desk at 7am. We found our train without incident, settled in our seats and all three of us promptly fell asleep for the next two hours. it was when we woke up, halfway through the trip, that we started to notice a few ants crawling over us. After picking off a fourth ant off my sweater I turned to Zach to find out he was already on his sixth, though some had been on Winry. I thought back to the room and didn't remember seeing any ants but we had left all of our stuff on the floor last night. I thought the few ants might just be a fluke until we finally came to our stop in Germany and we gathered our stuff. I stood up to grab my little backpack where it had been balancing above me to find it had come alive during the ride. The whole of it was absolutely covered in ants. Hoping no one had noticed, I grabbed the bag and practically ran off the train to the other side of the platform and started swatting them off as best I could. Zach had followed quickly behind and we did a thorough sweep of all our belongings, knocking off as many ants as we could find. I've gotten a lot better at being squeamish around insects, I even like spiders now because they serve a purpose, but those ants were just not where they were supposed to be. Not cool ants.
Thankfully the ants were the last of what that hotel had to offer us and we're back to staying in a real home. Maybe when we get back to the U.S. and start getting income we can spring for more fancy hotels, minus the ants and separate bathrooms, but even then we'll always have Paris.
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