Great location in a part of Paris that was new to me and my family. Lots of very close cafes and restaurants and curious little shops to visit. Several charming covered “passages” with lovely places to shop or have a quick coffee or snack. Didn’t expect to but really liked the neighborhood.
The apartment itself was spacious with lots of natural light. We were two families with two teenage kids and there was plenty of space for us to get some quiet time after a day of seeing the city.
Minor issues of cleanliness — a few dirty dishes left in the sink, some trash in one of the bins. And we didn’t have a key to the courtyard where the trash goes, so we couldn’t take our own trash out at the end of our trip (we did our best to gather it all together in the kitchen, as neatly as possible).
A daily frustration was the work being done on the building that was very loud and started early in the morning and went on pretty much all day. And the street was pretty noisy in the bedroom on the front of the building.
But our biggest issue with this otherwise pretty nice space was the communication and responsiveness of the host. We asked well in advance if we could have an early check-in. We didn’t hear back from the host despite me messaging him multiple times over several weeks. A couple days before our trip I finally sent an message saying the lack of communication was making all of us anxious and concerned that there were problems — and that resulted in a direct phone call. We were told we could check in early (we asked for 2:00 instead of 3:00).
We arrived at the apartment shortly before 2:00. The host had already messaged asking when we would arrive. I messaged back that we were there already. He replied that he was on his way — but we waited over an hour before he arrived (which essentially negated our request for an early check-in). He didn’t acknowledge or apologize for making us wait an hour.
We were given only one set of keys for the place: a fob to get in the building and a key to get into the apt. One of the adults on the trip lost the fob on a jog. We immediately contacted the host, apologized and offered to pay for a replacement, and asked for another fob. We offered to come to the host but the host didn’t respond to this message. We had tickets for the museum and messaged again that we were leaving for the afternoon and that we needed the fob to re-enter the building later, and requested that they leave the fob hidden on the mailboxes. No response. I messaged again at the end of our museum visit, saying we needed to be able to get into the apt. Again, no response. We went to get a snack since we didn’t know if we could get in the building. Two hours later the host messaged that they were at the apt and wanted to know where we were. They left the fob for us and it all worked out in the end — but it caused us to delay returning after the museum and it caused a lot of stress with the lack of responsiveness. We were all distracted by the idea that we didn’t know how we were going to get to our apt after a long day of sightseeing.
Overall, we had a great stay, but as the only French-speaker who was in charge of working with the host, this was really frustrating. The poor communication created a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety.