2012: Paris with husband and niece: Introduction

13 May to 22 May, 2012: Paris with hubby and niece

When my niece graduated from high school last year, we offered her a trip to Paris and she accepted. We had to wait almost a year to go due to college and work schedules but that gave me time to plan. I used Rick Steves Paris, Top 10 Paris, fodors.com, tripadvisor.com, etc. to help plan the trip. Special thanks to “Denisea” on the fodors.com France forum for recommending Amorino, Un Dimanche a Paris, and Reed. All were outstanding!

This was hubby and my third trip to Paris (2003 and 2005) and our niece’s first trip abroad. We flew from Houston to Paris on United, coach: easy flight, decent airplane food, terrible entertainment system, good service. We took the RER from the airport to the apartment (kind of a struggle since it wasn’t a direct trip; we decided to taxi to the airport for our return trip).

Apartment Review: I found the apartment at 211 rue de l’Universite through a link to “other properties” on a VRBO.com listing. The actual apartment website is http://www.rentalfrance.com/index.php?location=rue-de-l-universite-effeil-terrace I wanted an incomparable view, two bedrooms and a price we could afford. This apartment fit the bill. It was small but adequate for the three of us; any more bodies and it would have been very tight. I liked it a lot and would stay there again—the view is incredible: almost full on of the Eiffel Tower; so close we could hear the ET elevators going up! But I did not like that there’s a lot of stuff everywhere which made it difficult to unpack: all the closets were full and the bedrooms were too small for dressers, the living room had too many chairs for the small space, etc. They didn’t provide much in the way of start-up supplies (like toilet paper, soap, paper towels/dish cloths, detergent, etc), other than what had been left by previous renters. This was different than what we have come to expect from our previous 3 rental experiences. No biggie except the trip to the grocery took on some urgency when we needed to use the facilities, ha! We were able to get the apartment early, 1030am, which was very nice. Also nice were the free wifi and free phone calls to the US. The beds were very comfortable and we slept well. The sofa was comfy, too. Bathroom was pretty nice—all marble, good shower. Kitchen was tiny but adequate; washer/dryer worked well. Again, other than it being filled to the gills with stuff, it is a very nice apartment and we’d definitely rent it again on a subsequent trip.