mjs

I stand by my average figures for traveling in a city with good public transportation as they have been validated by much experience in actually timing what it takes to do something. While in the perfect world or situation you might have a hotel where you can leave your lodgings and get to the bus or subway platform right in time to get on, the more average reality is that it usually takes 5 minutes if not more to get to your emarkation point than wait a few minutes to pick up the bus/train. Time between the trains etc. can be 10 to 15 minutes apart later in the evenings or on Sunday. Add this to the fact that you often need to change buses or trains in order to get right to your destination and 30 minutes is a good average for commute times even in cities like London, Paris, New York or Tokyo which have excellent public transportation. I also should point out that the fact that the central area of many cities can fit in a 2 mile circle means that you can walk almost everywhere. The point is not to get to the outer circle. The point is to wander and explore the city within that theoretical circle while hitting it's high points, whatever they may be.

Dave_in_Paris

111op.

Good gracious, I'm still misunderstood. The Hotel Cosmos is not central but it is a fine, fine spot and a great bargain! And rue Jean-Pierre, which a certain well-known food writer once referred to as a "drab side street" is actually a moveable feast. And so is EVERY OTHER STREET IN ALL 20 ARRONDISEMENTS OF PARIS. Sorry, I get a bit carried away on this matter.

Keren

Hi Dave,
I stayed there in September 2003, I guess it was a mixture of things;
The Hotel de Nevers wasn't very good, the walls were thin so I got to hear some talks in the next room, the restaurant across the street kept me from sleeping several nights (I stayed 11 nights total), République, with its huge Métro station, where I kept emerging on the wrong side of the square and had to walk more than I'd wanted to after a full day of sightseeing (ended up using Oberkampf instead), the charmless street, plus some woman who threw a golden ring at me and wouldn't leave me in peace until I gave her some money .
The good points were the fantastic boulangerie on rue Malte-blvd. Voltaire, blvd. Voltaire itself, which I liked a lot, the wonderful Popincourt market and the Canal nearby.
But on my last trip, in September 2004, I walked down ave. Parmentier and blvd. Voltaire to Nation, and loved it. For a future visit I will look into staying in Beauséjour, Garden, Verlain, Prince Eugene or Cosmos hotels.

111op

Hi Dave, you didn't misunderstand. I didn't read carefully all the previous posts -- so I misunderstood.

Sorry.

But well, try Hotel Tiquetonne next time -- "more" central? (I'm just joking -- but one could argue that 2er is more central than 11eme....)

Robespierre

I stand by my average figures for traveling in a city with good public transportation as they have been validated by much experience in actually timing what it takes to do something. <b>I don't think the amount of experience validates your point. If that were the sole criterion, I'd win.</b>

While in the perfect world or situation you might have a hotel where you can leave your lodgings and get to the bus or subway platform right in time to get on, the more average reality is that it usually takes 5 minutes if not more to get to your emarkation point than wait a few minutes to pick up the bus/train. <b>5 minutes to the stop. 5 minutes for the train. 10 minutes total.</b>

Time between the trains etc. can be 10 to 15 minutes apart later in the evenings or on Sunday. <b>That isn't &quot;average.&quot;</b>

Add this to the fact that you often need to change buses or trains in order to get right to your destination and 30 minutes is a good average for commute times even in cities like London, Paris, New York or Tokyo which have excellent public transportation. <b>Again: if it takes 30 minutes to get where you're going, you aren't doing it right.</b>

I also should point out that the fact that the central area of many cities can fit in a 2 mile circle means that you can walk almost everywhere. <b>Of course you can walk everywhere - if you have the time. But not from Westminster to the Tower, or the Eiffel Tower to the Marais.</b>

The point is not to get to the outer circle. <b>From the center of a 2-mile circle, the <i>average</i> distance to any point within it is one mile. Half-hour round trip @ 4mph.</b>

The point is to wander and explore the city within that theoretical circle while hitting it's high points, whatever they may be. <b>I challenge you to draw a theoretical circle in London or Paris that takes in anywhere near half the sights.</b>

111op

Robespierre, remind me where you live again?

&lt;&lt;Again: if it takes 30 minutes to get where you're going, you aren't doing it right.&gt;&gt;

This is another of these preposterous statements that's blatantly false.

Maybe distances in Paris are shorter. NYC distances are also short, but it just depends on where you're going. A friend tells me that his work commute from the East Village (or Stuyvesant Town -- on the far east side) to the West Village regularly takes half an hour door to door (regardless of the combinations he's tried, involving walking, bus, cab, subway, or combinations of these). It's well known that traveling from one side of town to another takes a long time, even though the distances involved are short.

Another problem for NYC, anyway, is traveling from downtown to uptown.

Even if you start off in Manhattan and are going to another place in Manhattan, a half-an-hour commute is not at all unheard of. In fact, it's quite common. My problem is always that I tend to usually underestimate and end up being late.

beachbum

Thanks for that helpful math and geometry lesson, Robespierre. Now, what is your point? And, who of us do you think cares?

Robespierre

mjs and I are having a spirited little debate here, and my point of view is supported by mathematics and geometry. If you find the scientific rigor beyond your comprehension, feel free to sit this one out.

If you have anything <i>relevant</i> to add, don't hesitate to chime in.

Sue_xx_yy

I have to thank Dave In Paris for starting such an interesting thread. Even if it sounds in places like Ebert and Roeper during one of their more heated arguments over whether a film is worth seeing.

Regarding Dave's original question: why do people ask about hotels within 'walking distance'? I suspect 111op is right that choosing hotels is as much an art as a science. Especially since when someone says 'central' they not infrequently mean 'central with respect to my personal interests' (which could mean Grand Prix car racing as opposed to an art gallery). As for what is 'central' with respect to the geometry of cities, it is rarely as simple as a circle, i.e. something with one focal point or centre. The tourist areas within many cities don't resemble circles at all: they can resemble, at the very least, an ellipse, such that they have TWO foci or central points, not just one.

Nonetheless, as a general rule, I suspect those asking such a question are thinking of inexpensive bus tours. With such tours, it is not unusual for the tour company to choose hotels which are well situated in terms of the ability of a bus to pull up in front of the door and load/unload people and luggage, not to mention well situated in terms of local real estate prices, which of course will figure into the rate of any hotel of given star rating. (I think this was one of Robespierre's points - that for a given category, hotel prices vary inversely with the distance from the centre - once one figures out what that is). However, what makes a hotel 'inexpensive bus-tour-friendly' is sometimes incompatible with those features that make a hotel suitable for people wishing to pursue their personal, non-group-affiliated pursuits. On that note, I take &quot;Walking distance&quot; to be a euphemism that means &quot;a hotel of the minimum acceptable category, located such that one could get to at least one major tourist attraction by commuting not more than 20 minutes on foot or by simple (i.e. direct route) public transport, including average wait time.&quot;

111op

Robespierre, your arguments may be supported by mathematics and geometry, but you seem like a very opinionated person.

Maybe mathematics and geometry are a bit too complex for someone who majored in English in college. Personally I'm surprised that an English major can be this unsubtle in language.

Robespierre

If you want to get back to the subject rather than digressing into uninformed character assassination, I will be happy to discuss the geometry of downtown Paris.

As it turns out, my degree is in English, but my first &quot;real&quot; job was that of isolating faults in mainframe computers as a field engineer for IBM. I have since been both a systems analyst and programmer, designing very large-scale software systems. Several contract jobs have used my working knowledge of differential equations and statistics. Snotty generalizations about the capabilities of language and literature majors do not faze me in the slightest.

111op

Wow, that was &quot;character assassination&quot;?

At least I don't call people &quot;nuts&quot; or brandish my degrees and qualifications on a public forum. I'd love to see if your knowledge of &quot;differential equations&quot; and &quot;statistics&quot; measure up to m_kingdom's. Perhaps we can start with Ito's Lemma and make a quick foray into the Stratonovich integrals. And let's see if we still remember the Lindeberg-Feller Central Limit Theorem.

Let's just leave it at that. I think that our postings speak for themselves. It's not a day I feel like I want to waste my time getting into these petty arguments.

elaine

Sue x, for what it's worth, I agree with your recent summary/assessment of the pertinent issues.

It may also be a factor, with regard to Paris, that it started out with a center that was on the Ile de la Cite, and literally spiraled out from there, as the population expanded and as nearby villages and faubourgs were made part of Paris. So, the oldest historic sites are indeed within a radius of X from the historic center. There's even a meridian line at Notre Dame marking the historic center from which all other distances are measured.

That is not the case in Manhattan, for example. The historic center of the city was very far south, overlooking the harbor, (Wall Street and south) and commerce, housing, and the population started expanding north. No one now considers the lower tip of Manhattan to be 'central' within Manhattan.
So, in Manhattan, we call the center 'midtown' for descriptive purposes, but the most common sightseeing venues, from museums to the oldest structures, are scattered uptown and downtown, east to west. In Manhattan it would not be possible to define one area that is 'walking distance' or any defined distance at all, to the major sites. And as far as commuting, as 111op mentioned, it could take an upper west side dweller a good 45 minutes, minimally, to travel to the lower east side, even by using the most 'efficent' combinations of walking, subway, bus or taxi. A Brooklynite could make it in far less time, even though the home base is not considered as 'central.'