I wouldn’t recommend staying here. We ran into a variety of problems with Renate and the apartment.

Unfortunately, Renate manages this apartment from Germany. This would have been fine, except it only made problems a lot harder to be resolved, especially considering we had no point of contact with anyone who was in Paris.

After a few days, we discovered that (after some rain) the walls inside the apartment were damp in certain spots. It looked like water was leaking through in spots on the wall and then dripping down. Renate said the housekeeper would come but couldn’t tell us when the housekeeper would arrive, and at 8pm the next evening he still hadn’t arrived, and we told Renate we weren’t comfortable with him being there so late in the evening.

When he did arrive the day after, he tried to blame us for the damp walls, claiming that it was because we had the heating turned on low! I insisted that was not it, but this was what he told Renate. Renate then blamed us, claiming it was “condensation” due to the heating not being on. This was impossible, as it was freezing outside, so having the heating OFF couldn’t be causing this (having it on might have, but it was clearly leaking in accordance with the rain outside…)

We also unfortunately broke the microwave’s glass baseplate during our stay. We took responsibility and were happy to pay for a replacement, however Renate also wanted us to search around Paris and find a replacement ourselves, as she was unable to deal with it in Germany. I understood paying for the plate, but it is the host’s responsibility to deal with stuff like this, and Renate wanted to put it on us. It didn’t help that the plate was German-made, making it impossible to find in France. After we contacted Airbnb, the issue was resolved and Renate simply made us pay through the resolution centre.

After this, Renate rudely suggested that perhaps if we weren’t comfortable, we should just leave the apartment. This really upset us, and this was the beginning of a series of rude and unkind messages from Renate whenever we contacted her.

More issues arose, mainly due to a lack of inspection and maintenance on Renate’s part. The shower does not drain properly, meaning water is up to your ankle whenever you take a shower. There wasn’t one single wine glass in the apartment. All the bowls provided were metal, thus un-microwaveable. The hot water in the shower lasted barely 5 minutes at a time. The safe wasn’t working during our stay. The lock on the bathroom door outside has practically fallen off and doesn’t work well at all.

Overall, don’t stay here. Renate was rude and unhelpful, and the apartment had lots of problems. I wouldn’t normally mention many of them, but after experiencing Renate’s rudeness and being accused with damaging the walls of the apartment, I felt the need to lay everything on the table.