Paris Hippodrome Parc Floral, a Budget Hotel

In the afternoon, we stayed at a hotel located in the suburb of Joinville-le-Pont, about 10 km from the city center. The hotel takes its name from the nearby racetrack, and the "horse" entourage of the reception reminds us of this. Although the interiors are quite modern and in excellent condition, the guests are clearly not the owners of thick wallets. Mostly they are Arabs and residents of Balakan. The economy class is indicated by the presence of a single and cramped elevator, which almost always has a queue. After getting my keys and standing at the elevator for about five minutes, I decided to use my legs to climb up to the sixth floor. When we arrived at the hotel, I noticed that people were going up and down the side open stairs, so I went there. But here I was waiting for an ambush, on my floor the door was locked. I had to go down two floors to find an open door. It turned out that the stairs are designed for evacuation and the doors can only be opened from the inside, although on some floors the door mechanism is blocked.

The room turned out to be no frills, but with a private bathroom and an electric heater (on the wall to the right). I don't know about the winter, but I didn't need it in October. By the way, the water in the hotel is also heated by electricity at certain hours, late in the evening there was no hot water in the tap. There are no closets in the room, there is only an open hanger and a shelf for clothes, for some reason in the corner farthest from the front door. The kit includes an electric kettle, as in most French hotels, a TV on a bracket under the ceiling. The bed is comfortable, the linen is clean, the blanket is warm. In general, solid three stars.

From the sixth floor at night, you can watch the brightly lit stadium of the Jean-Pierre Garchery municipal sports complex, then the giant green massif of the Bois de Vincennes park darkens, behind which you can see the lights of the central part of Paris.

In the light of day, I saw that the center of Paris was incredibly far away. The Bois de Vincennes covers an area of almost a thousand hectares, it is the largest grain massif in Greater Paris. Since ancient times, there were royal hunting grounds here, and after the overthrow of the monarchy, the forest was used for military exercises. In the mid-19th century, by decree of Napoleon III, the forest was transformed into an English park. The project was led by engineer Jean-Charles Alphand and architect Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps. Bvli planted various types of trees and shrubs, built artificial lakes and canals with picturesque bridges. On the territory of the park there are several cafes and restaurants, sports facilities, including the racetrack, which gave its name to our hotel.

I opened the window and looked down at the small green island in front of the entrance.

In the morning, there was a cute ladybug and red granite sidewalks.