Yassine was a great host, very responsive and helpful. We arrived during Fashion Week, which we had nothing to do with, but which made it hard to find a place. Many of the airbnb hosts were slow to respond, which complicated the problem. One airbnb host told me I could have her apartment, which then disappeared in the hour and half between the time she responded to me and the time I tried to book it.

The neighborhood was an interesting find. We walked to the apartment from the Gard de Nord when the taxi line was over an hour long, and we discovered that the area to the south and east is quite different from the area to the north and west. It was fun to explore. The market street 2 or 3 blocks to the west is a good one. And in the end we discovered that an American colleague we had to meet lived 2 blocks away.

We were so glad to get the apartment that we didn't notice the apartment is okay for smokers, which we are not. And we arrived on the Nuit Blanche, when Parisians stay up all night and make a lot of noise. Since we had the windows open for the tobacco smell and the Indian Summer heat wave, that was not great on a narrow, stone street. Under different circumstances I would have preferred furnishings a little less basic, but what you see in the photos is what you get. As an architect, I was interested to see the typical old Parisian apartment layout, renovated in the 1960s.