On Sunday I was walking through the Montorgueil district (that’s in the 2nd, if you’re totally clueless) and at the far end of the Rue Saint Sauveur I could hear loud music and voices coming from an open courtyard. Since the rest of this street is pretty dead at 3pm on a Sunday, I went to check it out.
Although at first peek it just looks like a regular café-restaurant-bar hidden in the courtyard (which is pretty cool anyway), it is actually also the entrance to the Klay Club (loud music warning), the latest designer gym to hit Paris since the Usine Opéra two years ago.
Quite similar to l’Usine in many ways, Klay mixes the latest technology (treadmills with personal TV screens and iPod docking stations) and design (mood lighting, leather sofas in the lobby lounge) with the old Parisian architecture (vaulted brick ceiling, original wooden staircases and an atrium ceiling letting in daylight). Klay is much bigger at 2000m² on five floors and has a swimming pool. It also is much more adapted for boxing classes, très à la mode right now.
I like that there’s a café-bar-restaurant at the entrance, a branch of Drôle d’Endroit Pour Un Rencontre (more music), which is open throughout the day and evening to the general public (thus the lively Sunday crowd, who were obviously NOT all there to work out). Not that I’m encouraging anyone to go hang out at the bar just to check out the talent emerging from the club, ahem.
Prices for membership are €1490/year, about the same as l’Usine (which also has a new location at Beaubourg), at €1550/year. Stop by for a tour and a brochure. At the moment I can’t see anything on their website but a splash page and loud music that I can’t turn off (annoying), so until they improve this you can see a perfectly good photo tour of the premises here and an interview in French here.
Klay Club
4 bis rue Saint Sauveur, 2nd
M° Réamur-Sebastopol
Tel 01 40 26 00 00
Open Mon-Fri 7am-11pm, Sat-Sun 8am-8pm.
I’ve read that Parisians are healthy and fit people since they know the right way of eating. Gyms would simply be a luxury to them I guess. Thanks for sharing.
I recently joined Klay, and despite it’s price (normal for Paris, really), it’s actually a good gym. Having given up on Club Waou (ended my membership early – preening guys reading newspapers on machines!) – Klay members just seem plain "normal" and pleasant. The staff are very knowledgable and helpful (again, not a common occurrence in Parisien gyms). And the price for a single membership was 80 euros more than Waou. The quality of the facilities and trainers is quite excellent.
Great, 100€+ a month to be surrounded by state-of-the-art equipment no one knows how to use. Paris needs a branch of Cross-Fit, quick!
As if Paris gyms aren’t expensive enough! Going to the gym in Paris is a spectacle!