After a long train trip we arrived in Paris in the early afternoon and set off to find our apartment for the next 6 days. The simple task of getting from one of Paris’s main train stations to our apartment was made much more complex by maintenance on the Metro. This meant that we had to find one Metro line, then a bus, then another Metro line to get to our ‘home’ in Paris.
We have stayed in a variety of different types of accommodation on this trip but whenever possible, especially for longer stays we have tried to rent an apartment. To be honest this is a great deal more complex and risky than organising a hostel or hotel. Firstly it’s not a matter of speaking to a 24-hour multi-lingual reception desk but rather speaking and negotiating directly (with the blessed help of email) with a local. Also finding the place and coordinating a rendezvous to pick up keys etc has also been more challenging as even our best plans are sometimes complicated by such things as disruptions to the metro or train connections that don’t quite work. Also to be honest transport to these places is generally a lot more complicated as they are just in normal suburban areas not in convenient, central locations like hostels and hotels. Having said that we do much prefer to stay in an apartment. Here is a list of some of our reasons.
1. Generally renting an apartment is much cheaper; for example this apartment is less than half the cost of the very nice but tiny 3 star hotel room that we stayed in when we visited Paris in 2004.
2. There is much more space. This particular apartment is nicely decorated (it’s so French) and has a large bedroom/dining/lounge room, (let’s call it a slightly cluttered multi purpose room) plus a bathroom and a kitchen.
3. In Paris we are living on the second floor of a normal apartment block behind a huge classic wooden door in the 20th Arrondisssoment. We really enjoy the feeling of living like Parisians – even if our French is appalling.
4. We love having our own place and after a few days it really feels like home. Many people like having their room serviced in a hotel but for us it is nice to know that we are the only ones coming and going from our rooms.
5. Probably our favourite reason is that we are able to cook our own meals. We need to confess that our cooking is very basic- often we buy ready-made fresh meals and only heat them up. We have even cooked frozen veggies at times. However not only has this reduced the cost of our food by about 75% (even compared to budget restaurants) we can choose our food without the complications of trying to order in a foreign language. For us we really enjoy buying a few days food and then knowing that there is food in the fridge to eat when we are ready. And as we have mentioned before we love to find the local markets, and buy enough fresh food for a feast! Another bonus is that we can have cereal with milk for breakfast and we don’t have to eat croissants with ham and cheese as they are often the only things offered in hotel breakfasts.
6. Finally it is great to meet the local owners of the apartments, as was especially the case here in Paris. The lady who owns this apartment is charming, helpful, knowledgeable and welcoming… she has even invited us to her home for dinner (with lots of ‘Allo, Allos’ )
As we wrote this we opened the window for some fresh air and a neighbour was playing Bruce Springsteen!
PS We have read a lot of stories of people who rented apartments on the net- sent money only to find out the whole thing was a scam. To avoid this we have used agencies such as VBRO and Cross Pollinate, which have been great. This apartment was on a personal recommendation and no cash was exchanged until we arrived.
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