Hôtel du Triangle D’or

I left at 6am the day before my arrival in Paris to hike my way to my old school out near Gapyeong to attend my old students graduation. It was exhausting, but I’m glad I did it. Afterwards I had to make my way to the airport so I could make it to Osaka for my long layover. I booked the night at hotel Nikko Kansai Airport, which was nice and I pretty much just passed out immediately. (There was no one around to direct me because I got in so late to Osaka, but all of the hotels are in Aeroplaza. Just follow the signs to Aeroplaza and then the signs there to your hotel. It’s past the public transit hub)

When I finally arrived in Paris I was a bit shocked. I hadn’t been given any forms. I’m use to receiving forms and paperwork to fill out at almost any and every place I go. At the very least there’s usually custom forms. But for Paris they didn’t have any. At least not that I was given. Security and customs were so quick I was absolutely stunned. The only thing that took awhile was getting my luggage. Then I was home free. Though I was a bit lost, because I had to pick up my travel wifi in the airport at the information desk and the information desk shown on the map was shuttered. Thankfully there were people around who directed me further down the hall to the one that was open. The information desk helped me with my travel wifi and also sold me a Roissy bus ticket to Opéra (my nearest stop) that would get me within ten minute walking distance of my hotel.

I nearly walked past my hotel a couple times since there weren’t any big signs jutting out from the building and because I was on the wrong side of the street. I also walked around a little lost at first because there were so many side streets and I couldn’t figure out which one was which on my map. But eventually I found my hotel and checked in. I took the super tiny elevator up to the second floor to my room.

In France the main floor or lobby is considered floor 0. Which means going up is the first floor and what in America we’d consider the 3rd floor is actually the second. If you take an elevator it’s not that difficult to get lost, but if you’re going up the stairs on your own, then I probably would’ve ended up on the first floor wondering why my room wasn’t there.

Hôtel du Triangle D’or has a musician/band theme. Which is kind of cool. There are a lot of small details from famous hand prints on the ground floor to the bedside table being an actual drum.

I wasn’t very impressed at first. I had thought, once again, that I’d booked a room with a bathtub. My suitcase was full of onsen bath sets from Japan that I’d been wanting to try, but instead I had a shower.  The shower itself was a bit of a pain not to get water all over the floor because to get in there were two open sliding doors that you then had to slide closed which was just weird to me. I also kept stepping on the drain cover that was awkwardly placed and only loosely covering the drain. I probably kicked or stepped on it at least twice every time I took a shower. I also had to keep adjusting the shower head and it took forever to figure out how to move it (I did eventually figure it out but housekeeping kept putting it back to facing the wall every day.)

My first night the room also seemed barely prepared. Yes I had towels and the bed was made but there were bits of peanuts on the floor, that I assume came from a previous guests enjoyment of the mini bar and there wasn’t any hand soap. I just had body wash, shampoo that my hair hated, and body lotion. Which I suppose isn’t bad, I feel like I’ve just been majorly spoiled by hotels in Asia which tend to include all of that and usually a lot more, like free bottled water (depending on the country). But honestly I was too tired to care, so I just tried to walk around the peanut shells, used the body wash as hand soap, fought with the shower and went to bed.

The next day when I got back I did find that the peanut shells had been cleaned up and I now had hand soap. So I think it was just a mistake. But I still struggled to sleep since the walls were thin and I could hear people and trucks below outside my window at various times. I’m a light sleeper to begin with but when you add traveling and being in a new place there’s a high chance every small sound will wake me up.

One thing I wish I’d done differently about my hotel stay was to suck it up and include breakfast. The hotel hosted breakfast but when I booked my hotel I had this romantic idea of strolling into local cafes for my breakfast. Sort of like how I always imagined myself walking down Paris with a baguette. But the reality was that almost no cafes in my area opened until 9:30 or 10am. And I, meanwhile, despite being on vacation, kept waking up at 7am. I really wish I’d sucked it up and just gone back downstairs and paid for breakfast because most of my meals in Paris were actually had at museums just because I didn’t have time to go find a cute cafe to sit and chill at. If i’d been able to go downstairs and enjoy the hotels breakfast then I wouldn’t have felt so much pressure to find something, anything, while out and about.

My only other complaint is that I hadn’t realized it but all the outlets in my room blew. On my second day in Paris I wandered around and tried to figure out why, despite having let my wifi buddy charge the night before that suddenly it was dead. I assumed it was due to being underground. But I’d been using it a little less than my previous day and it had worked the entire day without problem. But no after a short morning at a museum it was dead. When I got back to my hotel that night I tried plugging everything in and sat to rest. Then when I checked to see how much they’d charged later in the evening I realized nothing had charged. I tried various outlets, I tried various cord combinations and I even tried switching on the little desk lights. Nothing worked. So I tried the outlets in the hall and boom, charging. So I went downstairs and told them, it didn’t seem to be a surprise to the person at the front desk, but he was unable to do anything until a coworker came to watch the front desk. It seems all he had to do was flip a switch somewhere else in the building and viola I had power. I hadn’t noticed because the overhead lights had still been working. But when I looked closer at the wifi cords they were marred with bits of black. Thankfully the wifi buddy still worked and my phone hadn’t been charging with the fuse or whatever had blown, because it could’ve fried whatever I had plugged in. And I’m very glad I hadn’t been touching or messing with the wifi buddy when the surge happened.

But other than all that I had a decent stay. The front desk was kind and helpful when I needed it and it was in a good location near public transportation which would have been very useful if I hadn’t gone in the middle of the strike.