We stayed a total of five nights at Fabien’s place. Although we didn’t meet him in person, he communicated through out and even sent us a list of great restaurants to go to.
We liked Fabien’s quirky apartment! His friend met us for check in and showed us around the place. The location is a great base and we walked heaps to a lot of great places. The walk to the Louvre is only about 20 minutes. Canal St Martin and Le Marias are only a short walk away.
The apartment itself is comfortable and had everything we needed - even a fully equipped kitchen!
BUT and this is a big but and I would like to reiterate that this problem is one that is not Fabien’s fault at all.
He has a horrendous upstairs neighbour - selfish and inconsiderate. At first we thought, oh this is an old French apartment where the walls are thin but actually, it’s just her/them. She walks and clomps around and moves furniture until about 2am, and bangs things around. By the third night, we were miserable and even contemplated moving to a hotel. It was so bad we couldn’t sleep until she slept which was late. I had to wear earplugs and put on noise-canceling headphones with white noise just to block her out. One night she came back at 1am, clomping up the wooden stairs in high heels, banged her front door, clomped around the apartment and moved furniture. At 2 am! She would also talk on the phone on the stair well at midnight. My husband who could tolerate any noise (being a shift worker) was as stressed as I am. Funnily enough, we can’t really hear anyone else in the building even though there are heaps of apartments close by. She would also have people over until after midnight and boy, they are LOUD.
We’v talked to Fabien about this who said he’s never had this problem before so she must be new to the building. It’s unfortunate as Fabien has a really lovely apartment and take the neighbour out of the equation, our stay would have been perfect!