Take the “metro” (Paris’ subway system) to the St. Michel station. Go up the steps and you’re on the Boulevard St. Michel-heart of Paris’ university area. The Sorbonne and the Ecole des Beaux Arts are all within walking distance. The Boulevard St. Michel, itself, is a broad avenue lined with bookstores and sidewalk cafes. Walk up the Boulevard as it goes up hill. Three blocks along, you’ll find the Rue des Ecoles. Turn left. This, to me, is one of the great hotel streets of Paris. If has some of the cleanest and most comfortable budget accommodations in the city.
The very best budget hotel on the street (although it’s also by far the most expensive) is the Hotel Claude Bernard, at 43 Rue des Ecoles, which offers neatly-arranged singles, numerous beautiful double rooms (prices include breakfast, taxes and all service charges). Often, the Claude Bernard charges less for rooms on its top floor (“au sixieme etage”), yet here, you’ll have tall French windows, which open onto a small balcony, and provide a view of the entire Latin Quarter. Primarily, the hotel is typically French and family-run; sneak a look behind the counter, and you’ll see a living room where the owners dine at night.
‘Directly across the street from the Claude Bernard, the big Hotel California, at 32 Rue des Ecoles, with breakfasts, taxes and service charge included. Next door to the Claude Bernard, the Hotel St. Jacques, 35 Rue des Ecoles, is, to me, an equally attractive hotel. The St. Jacques offers twin-bedded rooms without bath, but with breakfast, taxes and service included. Try it, and you’ll join the ranks of those who think Paris is an exceptionally cheap city in which to live. Similar prices are charged by the Hotel des Carmes, a block away at 5 Rue des Carmes, which is now under the same management as the St. Jacques, and probably maintains the former’s standards.
As you continue walking down the Rue des Ecoles, you’ll pass many other hotels with prices in the St. Jacque’s range-and lower. The Grand Hotel Moderne, for instance, at 33 Rue des Ecoles, taxes and service included, while the Hotel d’Orleans, 31 Rue des Ecoles, goes down for a double bed, for twin beds, for three persons in a room, all taxes and service included.
Both hotels have courtly old Frenchmen as proprietors, who’ll treat you with great dignity; but the Moderne is not nearly as good a hotel as the others on this block. In the better Hotel d’Orleans, you’ll have breakfast each morning in the combination living room-dining room hotel office. Next door, at 29 Rue des Ecoles, the lobby of the Hotel des Nations has the rooms are clean, and some of them are newly and brightly furnished. Breakfast and all else included.
A few steps on, you’ll pass the Rue de la Montagne, which leads uphill, in about a hundred yards, to a truly medieval section of Paris that remains, even today, a quarter for impoverished writers and artists-the poet Verlaine wrote his famous “Il pleure dans mon coeur…” in one of these very buildings. But keep walking along the Rue des Ecoles.
In another twenty yards, you’ll pass, on the left, the tiny Rue des Bernardins. Ifs here that the linguistic M. Rene Corre was forced to transfer his Hotel du Square Monge. The new hotel, at #42 on the street, is called the Hotel du Square Monge et Bernardin. They are perhaps too small for families, but they are utterly clean and well-maintained, they contain bidets and outlets for both American and European electric razors (a touch of thoughtfulness you’ll appreciate when you travel through other towns), all service and taxes included (breakfast is available, but it is not required that you take it in the hotel).
The hotel receives the same high recommendation that M. Corre has had in the past. Across the Rue des Ecoles from the Hotel Square Monge Bernardins, the almost-as-good Hotel Plaisant, at 50 Rue des Bernardins, continues to charge an astounding. It has nice proprietors, and perfectly acceptable rooms, some with balconies that look onto a little square…. if you ‘re willing to walk farther down the Rue des Ecoles, you’ll come to the somewhat basic, but friendly, Hotel Minerve, 13 Rue des Ecoles, and next door, the Hotel Familia (a good choice), but by this point, you’ll probably feel that you’re too far from the exciting Boulevard St. Michel.
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