I found one by accident after I exited Ecole Military metro station, walking pass Eiffel tower toward Rue Cler’s open market.  There is no paper towel so be prepared. Be careful with the door as it is automatic. It closes once you inside, but if you hold the handle, trying to check whether it’s closed or not as I did, the door will slide open.  Pay attention to this as you might not want Parisians catch you red-handed with your pants down in at a tiny little box in the lovely, romantic Paris.

At first I thought that public toilets in Paris were free given it was a high-profile Western European city. Later, my friends told me about their searching for a public toilet at Seine River, near Notre Dame. It cost them some cents or an euro and was dirty as hell.

If you know any other free public toilets, let me know as a friend of mine needs this sort of information.

I found one by accident after I exited Ecole Military metro station, walking pass Eiffel tower toward Rue Cler’s open market.  There is no paper towel so be prepared. Be careful with the door as it is automatic. It closes once you inside, but if you hold the handle, trying to check whether it’s closed or not as I did, the door will slide open.  Pay attention to this as you might not want Parisians catch you red-handed with your pants down in at a tiny little box in the lovely, romantic Paris.

At first I thought that public toilets in Paris were free given it was a high-profile Western European city. Later, my friends told me about their searching for a public toilet at Seine River, near Notre Dame. It cost them some cents or an euro and was dirty as hell.

If you know any other free public toilets, let me know as a friend of mine needs this sort of information.

Added: Good news! Soon Paris will be public toilet free. It’s time they make a change as they rack up so much money from tourists anyway. Apparently, the city spends 6 million euros a year just to clean public toilets. Gosh! Does this mean Paris’ annual tourists leak this much?  [Link to article]

Is there a cheaper one-way ticket?

I bought a one-way flight pass from Airtech for $399 including tax. Not sure if this is the cheapest fare I can get, but I tried Kayak and the lowest fare stayed in the high 400s. I never flew standby before so I got a little bit nervous, afraid that I might not get on the plan. But Airtech reassured that the chance customers wouldn’t get on was almost none.

How it works
• Airtech sent me a flight pass with a confirmation number.
• I visited Airtech’s web site and looked up available flight.
• I called the airline (Air Tahiti Nui) to add my self to the standby list and checked the seat availability every week.
• Went to the airport early and checked in. I think they issued me a regular boarding pass as I didn’t see any sign of a stand-by.
• I thought that I had to wait for everybody with a regular pass to get in first, but I was the first one (in the economy class) to board. It helps that the flight was empty.

Airtech highlight
Pros: The ticket was cheap. Airtech was reliable as everything went smoothly. Airtech promptly answered some of my emails. To be honest, I sent a lot of emails asking unimportant things.

Cons: I couldn’t get a hold of Airtech. I called many times and left a bunch of messages but nobody ever called me back; so I had to emails them. Having a flight pass for stand-by ticket made me a bit nervous. If this trip was important, I probably would have bought a regular ticket. One-way from USA to Europe only departs from Los Angeles (LAX.)

Contact:
1 212-219 7000 – fl@airtech.com – www.airtech.com

Air Tahiti Nui highlight
• Seating: 2-4-2
• Served two meals
• Provided more extras than other airlines I flew with: eye shield for sleeping + socks + ear plugs + blanket + headphone.
• Baggage arrived on time. I didn’t have to wait at more than three minutes.
• Allowed 2 pieces of check-in luggage, weighting 23 kg each.
• Charge $25 for each kg over. This depends on the person at the counter. I was lucky that my counter person let me through (I was terribly over packed) unlike a woman just right next to me was asked to pay $250 for her extra luggage or repack. Phew!
• Tips: If you’re a female, then go for the male desk. It’s more likely he will let you through without much hassle. If there is no male desk, read about my check-in experience for my Paris – Prague flight. [link ]

Flight date: November, 2006

Resources

Air Tahiti update

I went to a party last night and was told of a web site which showed you how to get free stuffs in France: eat for free, drive for free, etc.

radins.com

Thinking that I will either hang around with my local Parisian friends or take off to other cities beside Paris, I bought a France travel guide “Fodor’s Exploring France” for 11 cents from Amazon.com which I find not very useful. I like this guide mostly for its fine prints and colorful photos. This books simply lists a bunch of places worth to see and brief summaries. But I couldn’t find the direction to get to these places just by using this book alone.

So I’ve used mostly the information from Rick Steves’s web site, Paris section. Today, I went to a small market neighborhood at Rue Cler, near Eiffel towel.

[will upload pictures]

It rained heavily, and I lost all interests to walk around the city. I wanted to find a coffee shop with free wireless internet access so I could write or worked a little. A search on jwire.com resulted in 207 free wifi spots in Paris, many of them were cafe bars. Also, I found another web site: free-hotspot.com which provided a list free wifi spots.


The thing is although I had the laptop with me, I found it impossible to sit down and do anything as I was in Paris for godsake.