Paris Hotel Guide: Inside the Kube

Where: 1-5, Passage Ruelle , Paris, France, 75018

September 27, 2007 at 10:00 AM | by juliana | Comment (1)

The fantastic Monica Guy who has been delivering to us the Paris Hotel Guide this week, went inside one of the city's notoriously cold hotels. Here's her report.

After you've done the design hotels, lose the oldies and head for a hotel your mother wouldn't approve of, The Kube.

The hotel boasts a fine location in a dirty alleyway off one of the dirtiest, noisiest streets in the north of Paris - the best Turkish kebab shops and dry cleaners in the city, on the other hand, and definitely the place to go when you want to buy a plastic sieve or a cut-price power ranger outfit.

There's no sign on the door. Wink wink - only people who are really in the know come here, and only the really determined ones at that.

Big shiny cars and big shiny men at the entrance. They've ripped all the barmen off the front cover of the latest fashion mags. No Madame Fs in sight. Spaghetti lights from the ceiling, thumping DJs and a choice between hairy mammoth sofas or silver seats in glass goldfish bowls hanging on chains from the ceiling.

That's standard deco for trendy design hotels these days, as is the website with all the flash, boppy music and Japanese cartoon characters.

The really weird bit's upstairs. A bar made entirely of ice, like a giant freezer - ice bricks on the walls, ice bar, ice furniture, ice glasses, and a temperature of 5 degrees Fahrenheit. You pay 38 euros for them to ply you with vodka for half an hour.

Maybe the owner's an ex-tramp from Russia, loathe to give up his glory days. It's no longer true that you get all the vodka you can drink, but you definitely get more than I can drink. It's a bit like the Eiffel Tower - something you gotta do, even if you only do it once.

And the other weird bit's fingerprint recognition to get into your room, which carries on the ice theme with ice-cube shaped bedside tables and polar-bear curtains. No good trying to get in if your fingers have frozen off.

[Photo: happines]

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