Paris hammams

Every wondered what to do in Paris? Many people don't. They think there's too much to do anyhow. Well, when I was there I had the urge to do one thing - bathe. It turned out that hammams (Moroccan or Turkish style baths) are quite the thing there.
The Hammam de la mosquee de Paris one is easy to find and central. Most days are women only, apart from Tuesday and Sunday. It tends to be crowded which makes for a fun atmosphere. It attracts a mixed crowd so you won't feel like the only whitey.
The building is a type of fake Mosque, built by the French government apparently, to try and balance out the large number of churches in the city centre. Thus it is sort of a concrete replica of someone's generic idea of a mosque, and apparently not really used by any Muslim community. Regardless, it has a tastefully decayed atmosphere inside. Only a little light comes into the steam rooms, from small dirty sky lights. The innermost steam room is so full of such hot steam that you need to bend over to walk into it (the hottest steam goes from the ceiling down to about chest-height). Inside is a lovely cool water pool, worth crawling to.

Techincal details:
Bring friends and plenty of equipment (see http://liosliath.com/blog/?p=44 for some ideas), there's space to do your own scrubs and massage. The scrubs (gommage) given by the staff are rather short and not particularly enlightening. Everyone was wearing at least bikini bottoms, many wore tops too (French are prudish it turns out).
There's lots of info on the web about other hammams. Search 'paris hammam' and you'll see. I found some good info on the iwanttogotoparis blog, and there are millions of other local ones not mentioned in guidebooks or online. The Hammam des grands boulevards which is centrally located but unfortunately seems to have completely closed down. Be prepared for crowds on weekends and holidays. They can even get full by the afternoon and not take any more people. (Why aren't there any good sites about baths? - see http://spas.about.com/library/blguestarticles.htm for an example of a not-good site about spas - this is the biggest one I've found).