Apartment in Paris?

[stretchcruz]

Has anyone used VRBO or similar to book an apartment in Paris? We are doing a river cruise in April, and we are looking to book a hotel or apt for Mon April 22 thru Fri April 26. I've been on Priceline on hotels, then thought about VRBO and looked there, it looked promising. Any input? Thanks!!

[6rugrats]

Yes, we stayed in a lovely apartment in Île Saint-Louis this summer, that we found through VRBO. The location was perfect, and we walked everywhere.

 

We usually rent a house or apt. when we travel and have used VRBO.com many times. Just don't every choose one where the deposits are ridiculous or they want you to wire money.

[sailawaybellaluna]

While I haven't used VRBO to rent in Paris, I've used it several times to book apartments in Rome and London and have been really pleased! Good luck!

[stretchcruz]

Well, I'm booked!! She answered back very promptly, and has already sent me about 10 emails with links to different websites, recommendations and tips, and she or her husband will meet us at the train station and take us to the apartment. It is $140 a night, but for the service we are getting (pick up, plus they come the last day and put us on the bus to the airport, free internet and free international and local phone calls, a loaner European cell phone) we think it will be well worth it, also there are no taxes. We are also going to hire her for a few private tours tailored to us. Here is the listing:

http://www.vrbo.com/369153#rates

[KCcruisin07]

That looks good,especially since she is providing transfers from the train and onto the bus to the airport. (It sounds like she is a concierge too.) I will think about staying there if/when we are in Paris again.

[loma linda ca a & j]

this sounds really great ! will contact them when we take our

teenaged grandkids to paris for a week - much more fun to have apt

thanks for the info !!

[3dogmom]

Well, I'm booked!! She answered back very promptly, and has already sent me about 10 emails with links to different websites, recommendations and tips, and she or her husband will meet us at the train station and take us to the apartment. It is $140 a night, but for the service we are getting (pick up, plus they come the last day and put us on the bus to the airport, free internet and free international and local phone calls, a loaner European cell phone) we think it will be well worth it, also there are no taxes. We are also going to hire her for a few private tours tailored to us. Here is the listing:

http://www.vrbo.com/369153#rates

 

This sounds like a great option! Can you provide a review of how your stay was?

[stretchcruz]

This is from my journal......LONG!!

 

In Paris I had arranged to rent a studio apartment from Marie and Pascal. I found it on VRBO and TripAdvisor. We arrived on Monday to Paris and we leave on Friday. As we took the escalator up from the train, Pascal was waiting at the top with a printed out sign….Welcome (our names). He grabbed my luggage and we headed off to the bus. The plan was for Pascal to take us to the apartment (which is in the 8th), and Marie was waiting for us there. Pascal works for Air France and has for 31 years in the IT department. Once we got on the bus there was an unscheduled stop, the driver said he wouldn’t go any farther, we had to get off and wait for another bus. Turns out there was some type of bus strike going on on Monday that no one in Paris was aware of. We arrived at the apartment, Marie was here to meet us, and Pascal left to try to get back to work at the airport. He didn’t make it, no buses!!

The apartment is on the 5th floor (for us Americans it would be 6th) of a 19th century building on Boulevard Haussmann. There is an elevator that they just put in 3 years ago. The apartment is small but exactly what I expected. As you enter there are bookshelves to the right filled with books (Marie has a Phd in American Literature). Just ahead is a small (not wicker but woven) table with glass on top and 2 chairs. To the left of the door is the sleeper sofa which opens to a queen size bed. To the left of the sofa is the bathroom which is very modern. Just beyond the table and chairs is a balcony overlooking the boulevard. There are actually 2 baconies, the one to the left as you walk in is off of the kitchen area. The kitchen has a small refrigerator, microwave, oven on top of the counter, 2 built in burners, a dishwasher, and a washer/dryer (all in one). The kitchen is extremely well equipped, lots of plates/utensils, pots, pans, even right down to the soap for the washer/dryer (and I brought little Tide packets that I won’t need). All this for $140 US a night!!! She even has bathrobes, toiletries, tea, coffee, etc.

Anyway, I had hired Marie to be our private guide in Paris. As soon as we arrived, she asked, shall I show you the apartment or shall we walk? We did both, and we walked on Monday from 3 PM till 8 or 9 o’clock. Wow. I can’t even describe what we saw, I just asked DH and he said “Paris”. I seem to recall the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Bastille, the flower market, the Latin Quarter, went to her favorite (according to her, the best in Paris) crepe place, the Creperie des Arts. DH is looking at the map and says we saw the Palace of Justice. We got back here, fell into bed, and met Marie again this AM at 9. It is very light here very late. As I type this it is after 8 PM (my normal bed time) and the sky is blue.

Tuesday we met Marie here at the apartment. I am going to hit the highlights and then go to bed. She asked if we wanted to take a bus or walk. We, stupidly, said walk. So we walked to the top of Montmarte, the Sacre Coeur, all through the Montmarte neighborhood, saw the outside of the Moulin Rouge, saw the outskirts of neighborhoods she told us not to go near, then we went to the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, which is closed on Tuesdays but it so unbelievably big that it boggles the mind. We were outside and then went inside to her “secret entrance” so that we would know where it was (but she said she would take us). The Louvre is over a MILE long!! I was overwhelmed. And the mile is on one side then the other. To be honest I don’t know if we are going inside tomorrow or not. The lines and the miles are overwhelming.

We walked, literally, from 9 AM this morning until 6 PM tonight. We stopped this afternoon at a bakery and got some sandwiches and pastries and went to Parc de Monceau and ate on a park bench watching the people walk by and admiring the beautiful flowers and trees that Marie said just started to bloom this week.

DH is doing some thinking and said that we saw Van Gogh’s house today, to be honest I am on history/Paris overload. The walks are great, but my back is killing me and DH even says his legs hurt. We bought a bus pass of 5 passes each, only used one. Maybe tomorrow we’ll use another one so we don’t need physical therapy when we get home.

DH is folding laundry from the magic washer/dryer all in one. If my clothes don’t fit any more I am going to blame it on this!!!!

Hopefully more detail tomorrow, we are exhausted!!

Well, our time in Paris flew by. I was so exhausted every night when we got back to the apartment that I didn’t do any updates. It was enough to just sit and have a piece of baguette and some cheese and wine for dinner, then drop off to sleep. It is now Friday and we are on our 9 hour flight to Chicago from London. Flew from Paris to London this AM and now we are in the middle (actually, beginning) of our flight.

For the past few days we have been walking from 9 AM till 6 or 7 or 8 PM each evening. Yesterday we sat on a park bench under the Eiffel Tower and Marie marked our map for us of places we have seen. We saw Victor Hugo’s mansion, made of red brick around a square. To this day the mansions are only allowed to have one owner and not be subdivided, and the owner has to live there. No offices. The exception is Victor Hugo’s, which is a museum now, and has a lot of his original furniture and décor. We went to the Luxembourg Gardens, to the Notre Dame, the Champs Elysses, the church of St Germain, where the name Vasa is on the wall (he was a king of Poland), to the Sorbonne, where Marie was a professor after she was a student (school, including university, is free in France. Marie was from a small town so she did have to pay living expenses In Paris, which is not cheap, but the education itself is free). We went to the Musee D’Orsee, the Luxembourg Palace, a museum about the history of Paris(Musee Carnavalet) that was in a very old building and was very interesting. We did much more but I’ll have to get out the map to pick out everything, as there was so much.

On Thursday I had tickets for the Eiffel Tower at 5:00. You can buy tickets online ahead of time (I bought them in January), thus saving standing in line for 2 hours or more. You simply show up at your appointed time, you skip the line and get right into the elevator. We had been walking all day yesterday and then we took a bus, I think from the Jewish section, to the Eiffel Tower with Marie. We got off of the bus and it just looked like a normal neighborhood. To be honest, I kind of expected to see the Eiffel Tower from everywhere, but that is not the case. We got off the bus and Marie was leading us down several blocks. I kept asking where it was, and she said wait…..wait….it is not here and then all of a sudden it is!! And she was right. We went around a corner, and there it was, bigger than life. Much bigger than I thought. We came around the back of it, or what I think of as the back. I always thought there was this long grassy lawn in front of it. There is, just on the other side from where we approached. We climbed down more stairs and crossed the street and there we were. The lawn in front of it was closed because they are reseeding it from the winter, but the lawns on either side were open, so we hung out there with Marie, going over our map and talking. She is such a nice person and we loved our 4 days with her. She and Rog would talk politics (which I avoid), and she told us so much history and stories. Just to hear about her life growing up in Limoges and moving to Paris at 18 was great fun. Marie left us at the Eiffel Tower after she was sure our tickets were good and we were on our way up. She left us with instructions on how to get back to the apartment both via bus and walking, she also gave us a cell phone to call her if we got lost (the cell phone is part of the apartment rental, free). Since we had been walking with her for 4 days and paying no attention to how we got anywhere, this was a challenge for us. However, we made it back, walking, took about an hour from the Eiffel Tower to the apartment, my feet/legs/back were killing me (still are), and we had to stop at the grocery store for a baguette and cheese for dinner. I was pretty sure about the route, so we were fine, then Rog stopped at a bus stop and tried to tell me we were on the wrong side of the road heading the wrong way. I told him to just trust me, and he did, and we got straight back, but thank goodness for Marie, because we would have spent 4 days like that, just like Amsterdam.

Here are some disjointed observations about Paris. The architecture is stunning. We actually learned to tell the difference between 19th Century, 17th and 18th Century, and the 1960s!!! In the 1960s they let people tear down old historic buildings and put up these concrete jungles. They just don’t seem to fit. Most of the buildings are situated around a courtyard which often has gardens. Marie’s had 2 stables which are now garbage areas. When you are walking down the streets, you’ll see cafes, then a nondescript pair of doors, then another café or shop. Behind those doors are the entrances to the buildings. We walked through the doors, then an outside walkway to the front doors of the building. Our building had grand staircases with the original tile and railings. Very wide staircases, with chandeliers on each landing. We had an elevator, glass enclosed, which was added 3 years ago and sticks out of the side of the building into the courtyard. Marie showed us other buildings and passageways…you would walk through the double doors, and behind the doors would be miniature streets, where artists would have studios on the sides, and apartments behind or above. Some of the miniature streets were little neighborhoods in themselves. The apartment where we were is in a building that was originally for one family. The family feuded when the matriarch died, it was split up, and the ones who owned every floor except the 4th sold. The 5th, where we were, was split into apartments (Marie bought it in 1976). The 4th floor still belongs to a descendant who has interior design studios there, and the other floors are offices. This is very typical of the buildings in Paris. From the outside they look like apartments, but a lot are offices.

There are a LOT of people in Paris! And we were on the off season. In July I guess it is really crowded. The traffic is unbelievable. The horns are honking (as though it does any good), folks on bikes are in the middle of the traffic, the buses just keep coming, and folks cross the street on the red lights. Amazingly, when you get off of the street into a park (there are a lot of parks) or into the courtyard of your building, it is quiet. When we closed the doors to our apartment you would never know there was a busy street out there. When we were sitting on one of the balconies it was quite noisy but beautiful.There are a TON of smokers in Paris. They smoke while they are walking, while they are just standing outside of their offices, and at their tables at the outside cafes. They then toss their butts on the ground. The pavement is covered with cigarette butts everywhere. There were workers sweeping them up all day. One day we saw 4 huge garbage bags filled with cigarette butts on the corner that had been swept up that morning. They can no longer smoke inside, so according to Marie, when you tell a Parisian they can’t do something, they try to make it worse. Thus the total disregard for littering and smoking everywhere outside. One of the things she really dislikes is that she can’t sit outside at a café because every single person out there is smoking and she can’t enjoy her meal or even a drink.

We went to Marie’s favorite chocolatier, who makes everything fresh every day, and is cheaper than some of the others. She says he has been making chocolate in the same location since before she moved to Paris. We also went to one of her favorite caterers and picked up a leek quiche to have for dinner one evening. She took us to the world famous ice cream maker Berthillon. He has been in Paris since 1954 in the same place. Funny thing is, all over the neighborhood, you see signs advertising this ice cream, and people are lining up for it, probably thinking it is the original. But it’s not. The original is the shop we went to, where the ice cream maker lives above the shop, and closes his doors for July and August as he likes to be with his family and go on vacation. He says money isn’t everything, family is. The ice cream maker doesn’t even get upset that they are using his name. The daughter married an ice cream maker too and they all live above the shop. It was very good ice cream!!! We went to her favorite place for French Onion soup one day for lunch, Au Pied de Cochon. It is a fancy restaurant. They offer full course lunches for 25 to 30 Euros, but we just went in and had the soup, and it was fine with them. It was very good. All other times we just had a baguette or a sandwich.

The Presidential Palace in Paris was built for a king’s mistress. Actually, a lot of the mansions were built for mistresses. Listening to the history was fascinating. I hate to repeat any of it because I am sure I’ll get it wrong. Suffice it to say there were an awful lot of beheadings. I don’t like your politics, you don’t like mine, off with the heads!! Pretty awful to imagine, but we were standing right on the sights of the beheadings many times.

The view from the Eiffel Tower was breathtaking. We had tickets to the Summit, and when we were on the very top a young man proposed to his girlfriend. Lots of tears from the pretty blonde, and she kept holding up her new ring to admire it. Again, so MANY people!!! Thank goodness for the reservation. There are 3 levels that you can get off on to admire the views. From the Eiffel Tower you can really look down upon the buildings and see how they are built around courtyards. I hope some of my pictures come out, it was that time of day when you can’t see anything on your digital screen.

As we were walking the Champs Elysees, it was hard to imagine the Tour de France finishing there. They close all of the streets which leads to massive traffic jams (as if there weren’t already). A lot of people from Paris try to go away at that time. Marie said she does have 2 sisters renting her place this year specifically so they can walk there to see the finish. I’d be running the other way!!

We took a walk along the River Seine and admired all of the houseboats there. Some of them are so old! Some have fake grass and patio furniture, a lot of them have plants out now. I can’t imagine living right in the heart of Paris in an old boat on the river. Sure is noisy, but pretty. There are tourist boats passing by often, as well as the Hop on Hop Off Boat bus.

One thing we didn’t do is see Paris at night. We were so exhausted every night when we got back that we just showered and ate a little bit. It doesn’t get dark there until around 10 PM. There was a guy working in the insurance office across the street on the 4th floor and he was there until at least 9 every night. It was hard for us to go to bed because it was so light out, in Tucson we are used to it being dark early. Next time we may sleep in a bit later and stay up to see the lights.

The weather was so nice on Weds and Thursday that I am coming home with a red nose. Marie had sunscreen, but it wasn’t what we are used to and the sun got us a bit. It was nice to see the sun finally!!!

We enjoyed seeing “Marie’s Paris”. She would have taken us anywhere we wanted to go, but we really liked wandering with her through doors that we otherwise would not have opened, into neighborhoods and parks off of the tourist paths, and her favorite local crepe place and patisseries!!

[3dogmom]

Thanks so much for your review! Sounds wonderful. I would book Marie's apartment in a heartbeat, but since there are 3 couples traveling together, I think a hotel will be on the agenda.

 

We will be in Paris in July....not too excited to hear this is the busy season, but not surprised, it is summer. Thanks again, I enjoyed reading the review.

[stretchcruz]

Thanks, I was under the weather (kind of still am) so limited time on the boards. I was very happy with Marie's apt and I have had friends book whole houses for vacations when they share with other couples. Have a great time in Paris!!!