These messages are from a series of e-mails written after our vacation to Paris and Italy, in the summer of 2002. This page describes the Paris apartment we stayed in for the first eight days, beginning June 16 (...)
We arranged our apartment online, from www.panacherental.com. Our apartment is listed here, and the one Mom and Susan used is here.
--Jim McQueen
The entry of our apartment building reminds me of an old movie from the 70's, "The Day of the Jackal". The movie is about an assassin stalking Charles de Gaulle, whom he plans to shoot from an apartment window in Paris. The entry of that building had an entry corridor to a central courtyard, and the building's old retired caretaker had a small apartment by the entry -- the way I remember the movie was just like the ground floor of our building.
(I never sent photos of our apartment, so this seems like a good place in the story. These were taken at various times earlier in the week.)
Our apartment was up three flights of a steep spiral staircase. In the USA we'd have called it the fourth floor. We managed the stairs ok, but sometimes we were discouraged to get back from a long day of touristing, only to find the climb up the stairs was still waiting for us. Sean did get a nice shot up the center, though.
I'm not sure how old our building was -- probably built in this century, before the war. (OK, "last" century.) The main room was a little larger than our family room, and had large windows overlooking the narrow street. (In the evening we got a nice sample of Parisian life by peeking into the windows of the buildings across from us.) The windows let in an amount of sun that is probably pleasant in the winter, but in June we had to draw the curtains to keep it from getting too warm.
The three bedrooms were adequate sizes. Ours had a king-sized bed, and the other two were furnished as children's bedrooms. There was a large bathroom with both a shower and a claw-foot bathtub. It also had the clothes washer and dryer, but no toilet -- that was in another room the size of a closet.
The kitchen was as tiny as the one we had in London, but it worked just fine. About all we used was the toaster and the refrigerator.
The apartment had served us well. After we'd given our key to the cleaning guy, I left everybody sitting on their suitcases on the stone paving of the entryway, while I went to a pay phone on the corner to call for a taxi.
Love,
Jim