As all things must go, my stay at Loft Hostel (one of the best hostels I've ever had the pleasure of staying at) came to a close as did my wanderings in dear Belleville.
I packed my bags, cringed at the thought of dragging my luggage through the Paris metro, and headed for Oops! at Avenue des Gobelins by Place d'Italie. And as the name suggests, j'ai vraiment fait un grand oops.
Though Avenue des Gobelins is a lot closer to the main attractions, being on a more central metro line, the feel of the hostel just didn't match up with what I'd experienced at Loft. Especially when the latter was newer, cleaner, more spacious and overall more homey---at least in my opinion. I also felt that Oops! wasn't all that interested in cleaning during their "lock out" from 11:00-16:00, whereas I'd wake up to people sweeping the courtyard at Loft.
I guess I'm also bitter because Oops made me change rooms when I was only staying for two nights, which meant I had to re-pack, store my luggage in the inexplicably tiny luggage room aka where Oops! keeps their bread for breakfast at night, (yea, that's right) and to top it off, when I did get to my new room, no one had bothered to change the sheets on the bed I was suppose to take and I had to ask the lady at the desk to come give me new sheets. Bravo, alors, assez bien fait!
Mais, c'est pas grave! I did meet an extremely adorable couple at Oops! who lives in the same neighbourhood as my family in Taiwan. They are public servants, researchers, if I remember correctly, and the husband's family name shares the same first character with the Chinese word for witch.
It's easy to remember the wife had remarked to me, then encouraged me to contact them if I ever return to Taiwan. Ils sont vraiment chics, les deux, at least my parents would never go to Paris and stay at a hostel, and they're older!
Before I left Paris, I asked the guy minding the front desk to forward my unused metro tickets to them and hopefully he did. He was totally my favourite employee there, didn't wink too much/at all, unlike another guy, and he was plutôt classe, working the graveyard shift listening to Ella Fitzgerald. Donc, all was not lost.
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