Hotels and apartments in Paris

Which is best — hotel or apartment?

We often are asked this question. Our answer: It depends.

For most of our first visits to Paris, we stayed in hotels. Among the advantages: The hotel’s receptionist/ front desk will gladly make restaurant reservations for you, and arrange for your taxi back to the airport or train station, etc. — these kinds of things are very useful if your French is poor or rusty.

The vast majority of our recent stays have been in apartments. Apartments will give you more space for the cost, but even more important to us, we find the overall apartment experience to be culturally richer. We get to know the neighborhood merchants — especially the people at the morning boulangerie, but also those at the fromagerie, and the weekly market, and flower stand, etc. We’ve discovered that we really miss these kinds of interactions when staying in a Paris hotel. And frankly, we’ve grown to like the process of daily taking down to the ground floor our own garbage and recycling — it reminds us (or at least makes us believe) that we’re living in another culture — not “just” visiting.

Hotels

Our favorite source for Paris hotels is the Guides de Charme Web site. (You will need to click around until you pull up the Paris map listings).

We have stayed at, and generally recommend, the following Paris hotels and apartments:

Hotel St.-Beuve (***) — 6th arrondissement, near the Luxembourg gardens/ boul. Montparnasse. This is a classy place; the least expensive room (in 2006) was 138€ (and that’s a special internet price — the rack price was 160€). We've stayed here twice. Both times the receptionist/ front desk woman insisted on testing or poor French with rapid fire bursts, but we hang in there, and she's very helpful.

Hotel Familia (**) — 5th arrondissement. This is the next-to-least expensive hotel on our list. The location is good, especially for first-time visitors. It’s quite nice, not at all fancy, but the owners are friendly and have been in the business for many decades. Expect lots of American tourists. We also expect small hotel rooms in Paris, but this one -- a top floor room for three, overlooking the street, with a cot bed for our son -- was one of the most cramped we've ever experienced. At least we had a small balcony, and a nice bathroom. We've been in other rooms in the same hotel, and they too are very small. Note: The owners have a second hotel (***), right next door — it looks a bit more upscale than the Famalia.

Hotel Leveque (**) — 7th arrondissement. This is similar to the Familia, described above. The Leveque is on a pedestrian food-shopping street (rue Cler) — but again, expect many Americans. hotel-leveque.com/

Hotel de Lutece (***) and the Hotel deux Iles (***) — 4th arrondissement, both on the Ile St. Louis. The rooms are fairly small, but we've enjoyed room 662, on the top floor, with lots of light and a rooftop view. The main reason to stay here is to enjoy this little island, upstream from the Ile de la Cite, and providing a great view of the backside of Notre Dame. The Ile St. Louis is especially beautiful at night when the crowds leave and the island is bathed in incandescent light. Note: In the summer, the island can be overcrowded with tourists; we enjoy it most in the late fall and winter, when it's a bit less populated.

Hotel du Danube (***) — 6th arrondissement, near the Seine. This is a nice (but not great) hotel at very fine location for exploring the St. Germain area. The Musee d'Orsay is near, as is the great bistro, Allard. Our room, looking into an interior courtyard, was small, and yet very clean and comfortable. (The shower, in the tiny bathroom, was one of those module contraptions, but at least it had a door!) The various persons at the front desk were very helpful in making our requested restaurant recommendations. There's a nice sitting room near the lobby, and a rather austere narrow breakfast room in the back. We have since recommended the Danube to friends and family, and all have been pleased.

Hotel L’Arve (**) — 15th arrondissement, somewhat near the Tour Eiffel, and close to a number of useful Métro lines. This is our least expensive listing. It’s a bit more out of the way, and it's certainly not the place for a special occasion. But it's clean, has character, and is a very good value. We normally don't take breakfast in Paris hotels (we prefer to go to a local boulangerie or patisserie), but we needed to take a taxi to CDG, and we found the early morning breakfast on the patio pleasant.

The best general resource for Paris apartments is the excellent list set out in the Paris Notes Web site.

Apartments

We have stayed in five apartments, but recommend only three:

14 rue Francaise (2nd arrondissement). This well appointed studio, part of the Roth/Ray collection, is located on a pedestrian street near the rue Montorgueil shopping area, making for convenient "at home" breakfasts and lunches. It's generally very quiet, but on warm Friday and Saturday nights you can expect some street noise emanating from a couple nearby night clubs.

9 Rue de Square Carpeaux (18th arrondissement). This charming "room with a view" apartment offers a "Mary Poppins" rooftop expanse of Montmartre. It is near a convenient bus line (and metro stops), and it's not too far from the center of the city, but it feels far away from most tourists. The neighborhood is very enjoyable and real, with fine market streets and local restaurants. (And it's very easy to communicate and make arrangements with the owners, who live in Los Angeles but have a local contact to greet and present keys, etc.)

9 Quai d'Anjou (4th arrondissement, Ile St. Louis). This 4th floor location (no elevator) — one of about 200 offerings by Paris Address — is located in the middle of the river, on our favorite island. It's about as central as one can hope for, making it easy to walk to and from dinner at many left and right bank restaurants. The apartment feels far away from the tourist crowds that parade up and down the main street of the island eating their Berthillon ice cream, and it's very quiet. Entry is through one of those huge and heavy carriage doors, next to a plaque noting that Honore Daumier lived in the building between 1846-1863. The light and airy apartment looks out to a courtyard — for a river view, one would have to pay at least three times the rate charged for this place. Notes: (1) The Paris Address Web site is very easy to use. (2) For "lunch in," make sure you try the atmospheric and tiny butcher shop around the corner (Jean Paul Gardil, 44 rue St. Louis en l'Ile) for some great ready-made items -- a slice of the burgundy terrine, etc. (3) The Eric Kayser boulangerie over on rue Monge in the 5eme is worth the short walk for the best baguette (and much more).


Notes:

The Roth/Ray Web site offers approximately 10 nice apartments. Ray, who is British, meets you at the apartment, and is quite helpful. Each Roth/Ray apartment comes with a metered phone, making international calls (including to the U.S.) easy and quite inexpensive. But beware of the Rue des Lombards apartment (4th arrondissement) — it’s a beautiful two-bedroom place, and yet as we learned in April 2005, there is a very loud gay Cuban/Brazilian bar directly below that bumps, grinds, and vibrates the 17th century building framing until 2:30 a.m. nightly.