I just spent 3 months here with my wife and two pre-teen daughters. The experience couldn’t have been more magical. The space is substantial in size in relation to other two-bedroom flats in Paris (which are hard to find to begin with on Airbnb) and perfect for our stay.
Alex was fantastic and the check-in and check-out were smooth and the apartment had everything needed — certainly for a short to medium stay. For us, staying a bit longer, we found it a bit challenging that there was not an oven since we were there so long and wanted to bake. But this was easily overcome. We simply bought a big soup/stew pot and cooked meals on the stovetop. Other than that one minor inconvenience, there’s little else worthy of mention.
More important to me was having simple access to virtually anything we would need during our stay — from restaurants to grocery stores and from boulangeries to butcher shops, it’s all right outside your door. But more than food is easily accessible: the Arenes de Lutece is a 5 minute walk, Pantheon is a 10 minute walk, both Jardin du Plantes and Jardin Luxembourg are 15 minute walks, Notre Dame is about a 20 minute walk, and the Louvre is about 25 minutes. There are bus stands and metro stations within 5 minutes should you want to venture a bit further out. Regardless, this location is right in the center of Paris and makes your stay easy.
Having lived very near this area in 2000 I was already familiar with Place de la Contrescarpe and Rue Mouffetard — a beautiful square and market street and right outside the window here. It’s the place that Hemingway wrote about in “A Moveable Feast” and described in the opening paragraph to the book. Hemingway, in fact, lived in the apartment building next door and roamed these very streets. Yet he’s not the only writer of note from the area, as the Irishman James Joyce also lived just down the street when he wrote Ulysees.
I feel very fortunate to have now spent two years in this vicinity and I love it more than any other area of Paris. If you want to be in this area, you cannot go wrong with this place. Enjoy!