The photographs of the apartment as well as its tasteful interior and architectural design were the initial factors that caused me to consider this apartment as a potential Airbnb to rent out for my wife and I (including our 17 year old twin daughters) who would be vacationing in Paris for a week. The reviews written by prior guests were glowing and complementary of the place, as well as how great Isabelle and Emmanuel were as hosts.
Admittedly, there were other apartments I considered. Many were larger, and also located in great locations in Paris, and just as beautiful. However, I kept coming back to Isabelle's place. A winner needed to be selected so I gave a lot of weight to something so many of the prior guests had pointed out in their reviews-and that was how CLEAN the place was!!! That was the deciding factor. Based on these positive prior reviews, namely regarding how hospitable the hosts were and how spotless the place was, I decided to book this apartment.
I am a very picky person that is not easy to please. Many of my friends accuse me of being a male Diva, haha! By trade, I am an interior designer so, more so than most, I judge quality and detail with from a trained architect's point of view. Enough about me. :-)
DRUM ROLL PLEASE.... Let me start off by saying Isabelle and Emmanuel's place not only met me and my family's high expectations but, exceeded them in every way!!! The apartment was "AS ADVERTISED." The first thing we noticed when Emmanuel met us at the apartment to explain many of the space's features, many of them quite technical (I discuss this in more detail later in my review), was how good the place SMELLED!!! Perhaps more so than cleanliness, I am even bigger on smell! My wife and I were like my God, what is that amazing smell???
I won't bore you with details about the apartment other than the fact the photographs on the Airbnb website are very representative of what it looks like in person. The bathrooms in particular are super high-end, modern, and comfortable!
We weren't expecting all the extras Isabelle and Emmanuel included. The fridge was stocked with champagne, high-end fruit juices, sparking water, etc. My daughters loved this particular brand of pear juice that was provided. In fact, we walked all over Paris trying to find more of this juice to purchase, haha! Emmanuel did give us the location and address of the place to purchase more of the pear juice! He was great at providing all sorts of information! Any questions we had were answered by our host via text very quickly I might add.
I hadn't mentioned anything about the neighborhood which you don't get a sense of from the photos on the website. It has a very quiet residential feel which we really liked. It is located in a section of Paris with a lot of high-end design galleries and restaurants favored by the locals, not tourists. Again, we loved this fact! And I would say the apartment is located very near the center of Paris itself, making it very convenient to walk to major attractions, the Louvre being a 10 minute walk away.
One "feature" of the apartment we really liked and took advantage of, nightly in fact, isn't located inside the apartment at all. It is a common area containing a large dining table which is located in a private courtyard. This space was magical and divine!!! We ate and consumed wine there nightly!!!
If I have to point out any "negatives'' and this is really nit-picking because it is really not that big of a deal but it was how overly complicated and technical many of the apartment's kitchen appliances were to operate. Yes, they are all beautiful, high-end, state-of-the-art appliances but unfortunately, I felt like I needed to go back to school to earn a degree in how to operate these.
Now, having said that, Emmanuel did a great job giving us a tutorial on how to use these appliances, namely the microwave oven, regular oven and the washer/dryer unit. I was seriously jet-lagged upon arrival so not sure how much information we retained from Emmanuel's tutorial, haha! There were more instructions available on the apartment's iphone as well. Nonetheless, it posed the only real challenge. Future guests who select this apartment should be be patient in figuring out how to operate the appliances. Other than that, everything was utter PERFECTION!!! I really can't say enough! I would definitely stay here again and would highly recommend it to anyone considering an Airbnb in Paris!!!