Are you looking for a place with loud construction noise starting early in the morning? One where you have to buy your own toilet paper? Where the lock only works intermittently, so you get locked out, with no response from the host? Then this is the place for you!
Let's start with the good things - the location is amazing. It is within a mile of the Eiffel Tower, and is in a quiet and cute neighborhood. We ate at the restaurant next door (Felix) twice and got to know the owner - the food is outstanding and he said he hadn't had a tourist eat there in three years. Do yourself a favor and visit him - everything we tried was amazing! The apartment was moderately clean, and the bedrooms were decently sized.
Our problems began immediately upon arriving. When we arrived we noticed two things - the front bedroom had no blackout/privacy curtains and the main TV wouldn't turn on. The privacy curtains are a big deal not only to shield you from people who can look in from the back courtyard, but also because the sun rises quite early and sets quite late, so depending on your sleep schedule you may have a difficult time. The TV might seem like something silly to care about, but since we have a 3 year old and cannot stay out late (and are avid soccer fans) we wanted to be able to watch the late Euro Cup matches from the apartment. Upon trying to find closets or storage space for any of our belongings, we discovered the broken curtain rods for the privacy curtains, as well as the curtains stuffed into different cabinets. We reported all this to the host - nothing was ever mentioned or done to address the curtains, and after we spent quite a long time messing with both TVs we realized the issue was two-fold - someone had switched one of the remotes between the rooms, and the batteries were dying in the remotes. We were given no assistance other than a suggestion to buy new batteries and request reimbursement. When we told the host we were not going to spend our vacation time seeking out batteries, we never received any directly.
The apartment appeared clean at first, but we found used coffee pods in the sink, huge piles of dust in corners in every room, and tickets from a former guest from 2019! To find trash that was two years old was....really gross. Not to mention, late the first day we noticed the freezer was dripping. We opened it to find that it had huge ice buildup and wasn't properly closing. We also reported this to the host, nothing was ever done during our 5 day stay. We finally took it upon ourselves to break the ice around the drawers, put them in the shower to thaw, and chip out as much ice as we could so that the door would actually close.
We were only provided two small rolls of toilet paper for 5 days, and since the host was barely responsive to all our larger problems (I say barely responsive because at most we got a message, but never any actual resolution on anything), we ended up buying our own toilet paper to supplement.
Did I mention we discovered the broken curtain rods while searching for storage space for our items? Well the storage space was never located because there is none. There are a few cupboards in the front hall that *could* serve as closets, but they are either fully locked, or full of items. Kind of hard to settle in when you can't even unpack.
I am not sure how aware the host was about the construction going on, but the noise was outrageously loud and started early every morning. I did find it funny that noise was never mentioned, except for the multiple signs in the apartment advising that if you made any noise in the late hours, you would be subject to a 150 euro fine. The last night, as we were showering and putting our daughter to bed, a neighbor from downstairs knocked on our door and said she could hear us walking and running the water. Not that she could hear us being unnecessarily loud - that we were WALKING and RUNNING THE SHOWER. I was very polite and explained we were getting our young daughter to bed and would cease walking soon, but I was pretty baffled as to how we're all supposed to tolerate loud construction noise but not...walk or run water.
The final kicker was that our last day, we arrived home about 5:30p and the door wouldn't open. The lock would turn, but the door was stuck. We contacted the host over and over, and finally AirBnB, and were getting NO help whatsoever. Luckily my husband is a pretty strong guy, and after realizing we may we there for hours without resolution, he pushed the door hard enough to open it. We finally received a call from someone (female voice) saying she was with the property management company and would be sending someone over ASAP to look at the door. Of course, no one ever came, so I doubt they've tried to fix that (or any of the countless other problems) for the next guests.
But don't worry - the host was sure to message me and see how early we were leaving so that he could send the cleaning crew in early and let the next guests arrive early. It was an extremely dismissive message to read after all the unaddressed problems we had, and a funny thing to be concerned about since clearly the cleaning service isn't doing much other than changing the sheets and leaving clean towels.
Location - amazing
Everything else - leaves a lot to be desired