In short, this apartment was great! In a fantastic location, close to the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, great restaurants all around. However, there were several things that were frustrating about the stay.
1 - this apartment is on the ground level. I didn’t recall anything stating this when we booked it. While that is fine, there are tons of windows that are right on street level that is busy with people walking and cars, requiring the blinds and curtains to be closed most of the time and therefore not able to enjoy the natural light you see in the pictures.
2 - we got information about how to get into the building ahead of time, explaining there are two sets of doors to get into the building, each requiring a security code. However, when we arrived we found that one of the doors was completely missing, and the second was broken, making the building available to anyone who wanted to come in. We found a homeless man sleeping in the lobby on our first night. While this is the building owner’s responsibility and not the apartment owners, it would have been nice to have been made aware of this ahead of time. We were also told it would be fixed while we were there, and it wasn’t.
3 - the WiFi didn’t work and after contacting Johanna, she said she would need to have an internet agent come to the apartment to fix it. We could either wait around from 12-5 to meet the agent, or leave the key under the mat for them to access the apartment. As stated above, the building was open to just anyone, so we weren’t comfortable with that solution and didn’t want to waste our valuable and short time in Paris waiting for somebody to come fix it, who didn’t even end up coming for several days. The WiFi issue proved to be a frustrating exchange for several days of our trip and was finally fixed halfway through our stay.
4 - as many other reviews state, the shower leaks, badly. There were comments that this was going to be fixed, but it has not been fixed. Plan for lots of puddles, and not very many towels.
5 - the bathroom door handle is also still broken - similar to the shower leak, there were comments that this was going to be fixed, but has not been.
Overall, the place needs a little updating. There were a number of things that weren’t as polished looking as the pictures suggest (exposed wiring in the bathroom, light bulbs burned out, stains on the curtains.). Nothing critical, but could just use some TLC.
As stated previously, the location is fantastic, so if you go into booking this place knowing all the things, then I think it’s great. However, we were a little surprised and disappointed with what we actually got.