Badaude's Paris Address Book - Five Hotel

Down a dusty little side street just off the boulevard Port Royal, there’s an ordinary-looking door. Open it and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re on the set of Barbarella: egg chairs; a gas pebble fireplace; eye-bending op-art wallpaper and furnishings. Errm, groovy, baby...

If you don’t think you’d necessarily want to wake up somewhere quite so exciting especially after a night out in the neighbouring rue Mouffetard bars, don’t worry. The bedrooms have been tastefully modernised in calm white with feature walls in funky colour schemes. Artworks by laquerworker, Isabelle Emmerique, prevent an impersonal feel. There’s a lighthearted and witty touch to the décor. My room had a ‘glittering canopy’ or pin lights on the ceiling and bathroom walls. Afer a short tuturoial, I worked out how to change their colour from soft to bright shades, or set them to a pulsing loop. Run a bath, turn off the main light in your bathroom, and let the spiraling points of light transform your soak into a disco experience.

The hotel has all the features you’d expect: WIFI, LCD TV; air conditioning – and a few you don’t; all rooms have a perfume diffuser. You can choose your fragrance from a variety of special blends (une touche naturelle, gourmande, tonique, relaxante, or sensuelle ) at reception and change them as often as the mood takes you.

My room at the top of the hotel also had a high bed suspended from the ceiling and two romantic floor to ceiling windows looking over the courtyard and the Paris rooftops.

 

The hotel has a small but perfectly formed room-service menu (no restaurant), but that’s no problem given the location. The Five Hotel is way down at the bottom of the Latin Quarter, on the border of the 13e, Paris’s Chinatown the biggest in Europe. This is Paris for the Parisiens; a relaxed area with a neighborhoody feel.  Nearby, you have the rue Mouffetard, the famous market street, now largely given over to student bars. If you find it a little overrun by young girl’s burial celebrations*, walk up the parallel rue Monge with it’s scattering of cool, bars and restaurants. I like to sit in a cafe the square by Metro Censier-Daubeton (between Mouffetard and Monge) or take an evening walk through the Jardin des Plantes (botanical gardens) or the gardens of the Observatoire (observatory), which are both a five-minute walk from the hotel.

There’s a fantastic Franco-Japanese patisserie, Sadaharu Aoki, right next to the Five. Buy a round of brightly coloured pastries and take them up to your room. Order green tea from room service and enjoy.

 

Five Hôtel
3, rue Flatters
75005 Paris
http://www.thefivehotel.com
Tel : +33(0) 1 43 31 74 21

*the French call hen parties enterrement de la vie de jeune fille 

Comments

[Phidelm]

Bonjour Badaude, lovely blog - and I especially liked this post, for all the usual, horrible and horribly self-centred reasons: I used to live in a building on that square between rues Monge and Mouffetard. I know where that cafe is - it used to be frequented by market traders, all sitting there in a fug of tabac brune, reading 'L'Humanite' in the early mornings. How do I know? Didn't need an alarm clock on weekdays, as long as there was a market in the rue Mouffetard!
The quartier de la Mouffe' has clearly gone upmarket since I was there - even on my last visit (1991).

[badaude]

I think I'd find that more homelike. I used to live on Chapel Market in Islington (http://badaude.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/02/three-floors-up.html) where I was woken up every morning by the sound of someone shouting '3furapahndsupaglue! supaglue3ferapahnd!"