Very full of character… a lot of antique furniture and art. If you are looking for a “typical” airbnb this is not your average IKEA prefab scenario. Huge balcony for Paris standards, and a very comfortable sofa bed in the living room. There’s an amazing amount of books, and paintings — so if you want a blank canvas, it’s not blank.
Not a lot of wardrobe space, but plenty of space to cook and have a beautiful dinner (large wooden dining table with ~6 chairs, music/ cd sound system with classical music collection/ Edith Piaf, etc.) A lot of travel and guide books as well as every imaginable classic in French… If you want a window into real French/ Parisian life, and a unique neighborhood in East Paris that is safe but not overly gentrified, well-connected by metro and tram, this is great.
It’s a bit like taking a time capsule to what Airbnb used to be — you are taking part in people’s real lives, not just renting a subpar IKEA hotel room for profit for some already rich profiteers. We loved that there was a poster in solidarity with the workers’ movement. Even Parisians have a hard time to find an apartment like this nowadays, fairly spacious with a balcony, sliding doors, a bathtub, separate kitchen, elevator etc.
So this was a privilege for us in lots of ways. :-) But if you are an extreme clean freak, or for instance, we arrived with two babies, it was not already extremely baby proofed, so required some extra moving things from cabinets on our part to make the apartment “baby proof”. They do have a foldable travel baby bed that they made up for us. Again, the beds were very comfortable, and you can sleep well — another benefit is that it’s quiet, because it’s so high up, and well sound-proofed… Which can be really rare for an apartment in Paris (especially in the center).
Unique spot to spend time in Paris at a pretty unbeatable price! All our best wishes to Marie-Lys and her family!