Hi Steve,

I stayed in a F1 hotel once. Worst. Hotel. Ever. Paper-thin walls, made even worse by "guests" who drank/partied all night (yes, just until breakfast time). I don't usually mind shared bathrooms, but shared toilets that are not kept clean, ugh! 

Booking's advice is not strong enough, IMO, these places are to be avoided if humanly possible.

Good on Dodie for recovering so fast. 

Cheers,

Keith

I was just catching up on this thread about the F1 Hotel and found it to be quite interesting.  I replied to Keith's post, but it's just a general reply.  I assume the "pay for a towel" policy is extremely rare in Europe.  I've never heard of such a thing in a North American hotel or motel.  I've stayed in motels as cheap as $30, with paper-thin walls, with partiers outside my door, and rooms with water stains on the ceilings and un-vacuumed carpets and three channels of 24-hour porn on the TV--due to no other options.  And even THOSE places provided clean towels.

Is the F1 exceptionally cheap for that area?  If it was half the price of any other hotels I'd have no problem using my own little 24" x 24" camp towel to dry off--I'd consider it my own little contribution to helping the hotel to be a little more environmentally conscious.   But if it was about the same price as the surrounding hotels, I think I'd tell them about how much of a rip-0ff they are.

We have probably stayed in more hotels, inns and Bnb’s than most folks, and we’ve NEVER seen this, here or overseas.  The Grampies are breaking new ground here!

We stayed in an F1 in Vesoul in France. I couldn’t agree with you more. Worst. Hotel. Ever.  Ugh, ugh, ugh. If I had known what we were getting into I think I would have preferred sleeping under a bridge. Our F1 smelled of disinfectant but didn’t feel clean. Keith did a much appreciated and thorough bed bug inspection before I would lay down on the bed. The room was tiny even by European standards.  No bike storage so we had our bikes with us which meant we couldn’t get in or out the door without moving a bike.  There was a wind and we had the window open to try and tone down the disinfectant smell and leaves kept blowing into the room. I honestly cannot remember about the towels because I took one look at the shower and decided I would feel cleaner if I didn’t shower. As for the shared toilets, they were equally scary and in tiny rooms that would give anyone with claustrophobic tendencies pause. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough in the morning. Keith knows very well that I will never, ever sleep in an F1 again. It makes a great story, but I am still not laughing about it. The thought of the place makes me shudder. 

Thanks Keith, based on your review Dodie got up in the middle of the night and booked at three other places. In the morning, we chose the Ibis Budget.  It is still cheap, but we expect, not scuzzy.  We have found Ibis Budget to be ok in other places, though the bath rooms do seem like they were carved out of a 747. Other Ibis levels -like regular Ibis, have at time been downright pleasing - with free fruit and cookies in the day, good breakfast, and such.

Three channels x 24 hours seems quite luxurious?!

Yes, I had written to the F1 to ask if they were serious, but as we now see we should have expected, no reply.

Given Kathleen's graphic report, we should go there now as tourists, but not to stay!

Hey, we probably stayed at this place!  Is it the Ibis in Goussainville?  I almost mentioned it earlier in this thread, but it was back in 1993 so it didn’t seem relevant for today’s discussion.  The tiny washroom/shower sounds the same though - I think it’s the smallest we’ve ever found in a hotel.

Off topic: the morning we left here we biked to DeGaulle, leaving just before dawn’s first light.  Inadequate map, no GPS of course, but with the airport so near what could go wrong?  Well, we got lost - we came to one of those giant 6 spoked circles, completely unsigned as far as we could see in the dim light.  With a flight leaving soon, we were feeling panicky as I circled the whole thing twice, looking for a clue.  We didn’t get a clue, we got a miracle: just as we were about to take our best guess and hope we were lucky, a 16-wheeler stopped his giant rig in the middle of the circle, rolled down his window and pointed out the correct spoke.  We’ve held this story up ever since as evidence of how bike friendly the French are.

This Ibis Budget is not the Goussainville one, but is close to Roissy. Your ride from Goussainville, says Google, was about 10k. We have faith that each Ibis Budget is equivalent to the others in the chain for smallness of bathroom. In France, we like to gauge overall room tinyness by whether we have to make an appointment with each other to pass between the end of the bed and the wall. For small rooms and low quality we had previously annointed the Premiere Classe chain, whose title is a joke. But now we should go visit F1 to see what they have achieved in charging a lot for little.

To be cured of notions of French bike friendliness, try cycling from Verdun to Metz on the only road - D903!