First the good stuff: the apartment is fantastic and everything I expected from the listing. Beds are comfortable, living room is inviting with comfy couch and lots of natural light coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The kitchen and bathrooms were clean, updated, modern, and had everything we needed. My favorite part of the unit is the huge, wraparound balcony overlooking Frenchmen's nightlife.
There is a lot to do on Frenchmen (bars and live music). It's a locals area just a couple blocks off the French Quarter, so it's an easy walk over to the French Market, Jackson Square, Bourbon, etc. Brieux Carre brewery is right behind the unit and they have great beer.
Now the bad stuff: the neighborhood crime. We parked in a Premier Parking lot (there are two and you should NOT park in either). We chose to park in the lot across from Brieux Carre, paid for our spot, and were immediately booted. As we came out to finish grabbing stuff from the car, boots were already on, so I imagine they were watching us as we unloaded. The situation became quickly scammy and designed to trap tourists into paying to get boots off. While we had paid to park here, they have the lot cleverly divided in half so you have to be very careful which half you are paying for. They trick you, though, with signs facing your car with QR codes to pay, however these are really for the other half. The guy that came out, in cahoots with premier parking, had blacked out license plates. Anyway, more details and I could go on, but basically DON'T PARK in either of those lots. It was a $150 mistake on our part.
Day 2: All cars in both of those Premier Parking lots were broken into/windows smashed. So from here we lost some valuables and had to spend another $350 just to replace the window. That doesn't account for the lost valuables. After repairing the window, we began using the metered parking on the street right in front of the unit. This required being back at the car every 2 hours during daytime to feed the meter. We filed a police report regarding the smashed window. Police advised to leave car unlocked b/c the homeless population around this area were active into the non-violent crime and would likely bust another window wherever we were. So we did just that and on Day 3, upon leaving to come home, woke to find our car had been violated yet again. Rifled through everything and took a couple things that we'd forgotten to remove.
So bottom line: stay in the Marigny but don't bring your car!
As a nod to the host, they did refund me $185 on the first day when I told them about parking lot scam and window smash. The 3 day-stay here was very costly and put a huge damper on our feelings about the vacation as a whole, despite having done some fun things while in NoLA.