Auberge Internationale des Jeunes
10, rue Trousseau
75011 PARIS
France
Tel: 01 47 00 62 00
Fax: 01 47 00 33 16
It's the cheapest place in Paris, and it's kept remarkably clean, but this place has about as much life as Al Gore at a funeral. The saving grace of the place, socially, is that it attracts a lot of travelers (it's cheap, at only 91F), so you're bound to meet some interesting people. The staff speaks fluent English, but they're a mixed bag as far as being helpful. Two or three of them are friendly, the other two or three are totally impatient.
They have a couple vending machines (two sell beer!) and an internet booth (10FF (~$1.75) for ten minutes) from which you can send email or surf the web, but it doesn't have a tilde key (~), so you can't, for example, get to this site, unless you know the full pathname of my directory. No kitchen and no meals except breakfast, which is included in the price of your room. I never bothered to go down for breakfast, as it was just a cheap roll of bread and coffee or tea.
The showers are push-button with no temperature control, which is somewhat irritating, but the worst part about this place is that they close from 10:00am-3:00pm. So, in the middle of the day, when you're tired or jetlagged or whatever, and you want a shower, or you just want to change clothes, forget it, you're locked out. The reception is open, but they even close off the commons area to clean it. So, everything's pretty clean, but you pay a price for it. I'd stay here again, certainly, but not if I could afford to just go stay in a hotel.