Spending the weekend in a hotel
I’m not talking about traveling here: the last time I took a day off was on December 30th — and I was visiting the in-laws. Actually, the last real vacation we took was in August: talk about French quality of life… I’m not talking about a staycation here either: we have a child, let’s be real.
No, what I mean was — I had the brilliant idea to check out hotels in the neighborhood during the weekend, in order to work a little while baby girl is napping.
An idea borne out of necessity, mind you: there are no cosy coffee shops where we live. You’ll find a bunch of Indian restaurants and late night delis, which is great for my kind of snacking, but no place to sit and work from in the afternoon when you’re trying to stay away from the cat who will inevitably sit on your desk — between you and the laptop. So I figured we could try hotel bar areas for a change. Such a resourceful guy…
On Saturday, we started easy and went to the second nearest hotel from our home — the nearest one doesn’t really have a bar, at least not for visitors: talk about elitism. The place we ended up at was clearly no VIP-only: the bar didn’t even have service. They let us sit there and the wifi was decent, so that was fine by me. At some point, a person working there walked by so we managed to get some tea. Which they forgot to charge us for. We’ll definitely come back.
On Sunday, we ventured far — another 300 yards, all the way to the Ourcq canal (where you almost feel at sea, except there are pigeons rather than seagulls). There is one coffee shop there we’ve been to before, but it’s pretty crowded and noisy — precisely because it’s the only one around. However, there is a hotel not far from it, a Holiday Inn no less. And so we tried it: the downside was they remembered us when time came to pay the bill, the upside was it was pretty chill, with a bunch of light coming in (helped by the fact that it was actually sunny outside) and very nice staff who happened to speak every language I spoke — that would be English, Russian and a little bit of French.
Next weekend, we’ll try and walk in the other direction: that’s where Montmartre is located, I assume there are hotels there…