The American in Formula 1

In Europe travelers can save money by staying with a friend, or a youth hostel. If you don't know anyone in Paris and have outgrown dorm-style living, "Formula 1" hotels are the next step up in privacy, without breaking the bank. At breakfast, you can hear a different language spoken at each table nearby. Neat! If you have never stayed in a Formula 1 before, there are a few things you may want to bring with you, as Travis and I discovered:

10.) Your own bottled water and snacks. The hotel does have pretty comprehensive vending machines in the lobby, but they will charge you twice what the products are actually worth.

9.) Your cell phone. Nothing but a payphone in the lobby here!

8.) A travel alarm clock. No clocks in the rooms, or wake up calls either.

7.) Your own soap. Your hotel room comes with sink, and you share a bathroom down the hall with your neighbors. If you want to wash your hands with actual soap in your room, you will need to bring your own soap as none is provided.

6.) Your own towel. The hotel _usually_ does provide you with your own towel. One day the housekeeping staff came into our room and replaced two used towels with only one clean. Seeing as this towel is roughly the size of a washcloth anyway, there really isn't any way you can share it. A full-sized actual towel would be a huge improvement, and use the ones the hotel leaves as hand towels in your room.

5.) Your own breakfast cereal. For a very cheap price you can buy breakfast in the hotel. The choices include plain white bread, chunks of french bread, butter, jam, apple sauce, corn flakes, coffee, hot chocolate, and orange juice. All of it is pretty stale and low quality, and by the fourth day, believe me, you would kill for a cheese omelet or piece of fresh fruit. The corn flakes were the sort that instantly dissolve into mush after the application of milk, and we noticed one family had brought their own mini boxes of much better cereal. Smart!

4.) Some flips flops. This is to wear while you are in the showers, of course.

3.) A blind eye. In our room there were grubby fingerprints everywhere, dust and foot prints on the carpet, and oddly enough, a small wad of gum stuck to the top bunk.

2.) Some The LYSOL® Brand Spray Air Sanitizer. The bathrooms. Oh, the bathrooms. When you unlock the door to leave the bathroom stall, it automatically flushes the toilet. This is the ONLY way to flush the toilet. Sometimes, though, you go into the little room and discover that magically somehow the last person never flushed. Did they never lock the door in the first place??? So you have to lock and unlock the door until the flush mechanism engages. No matter what, every bathroom smells virulently like cat pee. So while you are flapping the lock open and closed, and trying not to look too closely at the dead bugs or curly hairs on the floor, a little Lysol might at least make the air smell better. This whole thing is a bit mystical, as the lights are also turned on as you lock the door. Was someone peeing with the door..open...in the dark?

1.) An open mind. Some people actually seem to live in these hotels as if it is a big dorm. They lounge on their bed with the door open, wander back to their room from the shower in the nude, and their children run around raucously in the halls. It could be nostalgic, if you liked dorm living the first time around.

Or, I suppose, you could save money on all these things and spring for a slightly more expensive hotel. And miss out on this cultural experience? Heaven forbid.