During my stay in Saint-Etienne recently, we were housed at the Hotel Mercure Saint-Etienne Parc de L'Europe. That's quite a long name for a hotel that is a three star hotel in Europe (and what I would categorize to be a low two star hotel in the U.S.). The hotel is located next to one of the many parks in Saint-Etienne - Parc de L'Europe - and one of the more popular parks in the city, as well.
The Hotel Mercure Saint-Etienne Parc de L'Europe is part of the Accor hotel chain, a European-based chain that has worldwide hotel chains such as Mercure, Ibis, Sofitel, Red Roof Inn and Motel 6 as part of their empire. The one in Saint-Etienne is nothing more than a business hotel and is somewhat situated in a residential area of the city (see map). The one thing that it has going for it is that one of the finer restaurants in the city is located in the hotel - La Ribandiere. But Saint-Etienne is a highly industrialized city (they have over 400 manufacturers listed on a map in the hotel) and there aren't a lot fine restaurants in town.
My room on the second floor was somewhat smallish and spartan. The view out of my window (right) was not too great. It was of a high-rise apartment building, one of many in the immediate area of the hotel. Actually, I was somewhat surprised at the large amount of apartment buildings in Saint-Etienne. I was told that over 20% of the total population of Saint-Etienne (which is about 225,000 in the metropolitan area) live in small apartments.
I found out later on that the upper floors were being renovated into more of a modern mode. I wouldn't say my room was tired, but let's just say that I've stayed in Comfort Inn's at $59 a night that were much nicer compared to the room that I stayed in. (By the way - the rooms were listed at $92 Euros a night - roughly $116 US.)
But the bathroom did have a bidet. I joked with my colleagues after we checked in that I certainly liked "that there foot bath thing in my bathroom." They initially didn't know what to think until I cracked a half-ass smile when I realized they thought I was serious.
One of the big reasons I didn't post anything for a week is that I had to choose between taking my camera or my computer. I opted for the camera. I figured that I may have a chance to use a computer that the hotel may have. But that went away when I found that they charged for usage of the computer in the lobby - 5 Euros ($6.25 US) for 15 minutes.
Plus the fact that the keyboard layout was sort of funky - it was obviously set up for French language and wasn't a normal "Qwerty" set up. (Click on the above picture to see an enlarged photo of the keyboard.) I tried to use it once and realized that I'd use up a good portion of the 15 minutes trying to figure out where the hell the individual keys were on the keyboard.
The front area of the hotel was very nice - they had a nice little flower garden and a terrace that looked out over to the park. It was nice to go out in the morning after breakfast to hang out looking at the flowers waiting to go over to the factory.
And speaking of breakfast, the Hotel Mercure Saint Etienne Parc de L'Europe had a nice little spread for a continental breakfast. Each day I had a homemade croissant and three or four 6 oz. glasses of orange juice. Why so many? 
Because they had this awesome juicing machine where you would put oranges in a little chute, they would feed into a cutter mechanism that would slice the oranges in half. Then they would catch on a wheel that would squeeze the juice out of the oranges. There was a mesh tray drain at the bottom that kept the pulp out of the juice, and then you had a little spigot that you'd pour your juice into a glass. It took about 4 oranges to get a 6 oz glass of juice. But it was great.
It was so great that my boss, Daniel, said that he wanted to look into distributing the juice machine in North America. However, I found out that it's already being distributed in the states. I also found that the suggested retail price of the machine they had at the hotel was just a scad under $4000 (US). But it was way cool.
Here's some pictures from the Parc de L'Europe across the street. Parc de L'Europe is a good sized park, I'm guessing somewhere around 5 to 6 acres in the center of the city. 
I went for walks through there on three or four occasions early in the morning. Here's a picture of the main walkway through the center of the park. I like how the sun is filtering through on the trees in the background, but the ones in the foreground are still in the shadow of the hill behind me (Saint-Etienne is a very hilly city).
They had a large jungle gym in the park, too. I thought it was pretty cool. You'd never see anything like this in America, mainly because we have such a litigious society and the first time a kid fell off this thing, his parents would be swimming in money.
Here's a neat statue at the front of the park. I tried to get the sun filtering through the sculpture, and it would have worked had I taken time to screw around with it.
One of Saint-Etienne's "sister" cities is Des Moines, IA. Since I grew up near Des Moines I thought it was kind of neat that I was in one of Des Moines' international sister cities. However, the only acknowledgment to Des Moines that I could see in Saint-Etienne was this sign for an alley near the hotel.
For mid-priced European standards, the Hotel Mercure Saint-Etienne Parc de L'Europe is a nice place. I hope they have the lower floor rooms remodeled the next time I go back - which may be next year. They're making noises they want us to come back each year now. I guess I don't know if I like that idea or not.
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