In Paris again, after almost 11 years, but where to stay? Hotels in the lower 10 arrondissements are quite pricey and so our option was to stay in the northeasterly part of the city in a no-frills hotel, or rent an apartment near the center of the city for less money. So … we ended up in a rented apartment near Arc de Triomphe. Renting apartments is made really easy through AirBnB, which shows you the location, price, and features in a very comparable fashion. Since it was our first time, we had to learn the caveats: in addition to the daily rental fee, there are cleaning fees and an AirBnB service fee. Yet, even including those fees, an apartment turned out much more economical.  Before booking, you should also send the owner an email through the site and then receive the “direct booking” link, which we did. Also the room fee can be haggled at that moment and the owner can pre-authorize you for a lower fee, in our case, the room rate (CHF 50) was already lower as we did last-minute reservations and nicely fit into the middle of the week. Finding the apartment is quite easy, as you can search for location and price.

The apartment included a kitchen, living room, bathroom, and bedroom, all on about 17 square meters (about 180 sq ft), see other post. The apartment also included a refrigerator, wifi, and even a washing machine, which we didn’t use. It had two windows with view of Paris, but looking away from the city center, so it wasn’t so glamorous.

Now the interesting (or not so good) part, the apartment was on the 7th floor, with a tight staircase consisting of 140 steps leading up to it. It said so clearly in the directions, but it is just hard to imagine. It took us just under 2 minutes of continuous climbing to reach the front door. That time is the equivalent of missing a metro in Paris and having to wait for the next one to arrive, so quite an eternity. It sure is good exercise, and there were quite a few other people living up there. Before checking out, we took – as directed by our host – our garbage and dumped it in the green container in the back-alley.

I think we will use AirBnB again, it turned out to be a quite useful and unique service to us. Of course, instead of renting an entire apartment, you can also rent a room with a local host, which might be even more interesting.