Paris, apartment-style

National Review, Dec 8, 1997 by Priscilla L. Buckley

I AWAKE to a pleasing gurgle from the coffee machine and the tantalizing aroma of a fresh croissant heating up. A cool breeze blows across the dining room through tall French windows. This spring, on a two-and-a-half-week visit to Paris, my sister Jane and I had rented an apartment on the Rue du Cherche-Midi in the sixth arrondissement, just off the Boulevard Montparnasse. We bought the croissants late yesterday afternoon as we walked home from the Duroc metro station. The coffee maker was primed last night. The first one up in the morning will switch it on. When depends on when we wake up; we have no set schedule. This is a vacation that will plan itself according to the weather and our mood.

An apartment gives you a freedom of movement that is unknown in the swankiest of hotels; and swanky hotels in Paris, and even unswanky hotels in Paris, cost un bras et une jambe these days. For years Jane and I had stayed at a small hotel just off the Boulevard St. Germain, from the days when it was shabby and unpretentious through its modernization phase, during which the nightly tab, which included breakfast, had gone in stages from $65 to $125. But the last time we checked it, it cost $450 a night (plus breakfast), which is not the way we like to spend our money in the gastronomic capital of the world.

One day, in the travel section of the Sunday New York Times, a small ad for Paris apartments caught my eye. I called and by return mail received a catalogue from a California outfit called Chez Vous, one of a dozen or so firms that rent apartments in both Paris and London on short-term leases to people who want the freedom and space (and budget advantages) that your own digs can provide. A young friend, for instance, works in an agency in Paris that specializes in finding apartments for visiting musicians, dancers, and singers. You see ads in the metro for vacation rentals, presumably when the Parisian owners are in the country or at the beach. My two experiences happen to have been with Chez Vous (1001 Bridgeway, Suite 245, Sausalito, Calif. 94965; telephone: 415-331-2535), which has the signal virtue of being run by Americans for Americans. It caters to a clientele that expects lights to be bright enough to read by, water to run both hot and cold, and washing machines and dishwashers (rare in Paris apartments) not only to be there but also to work.

Chez Vous's beautifully written and illustrated brochure offers nearly fifty apartments in Paris. Almost all of them are in the popular Left Bank fifth, sixth, and seventh arrondissements, but there are also flats in the Marais, one on the historic Place des Vosges, and two or three on the exclusive, but not all that convenient, Ile St. Louis, near Notre Dame and the Ile de la Cite. The brochure describes each apartment in detail, stressing how many people it will accommodate. (All Chez Vous's apartments have sofas that can be made into beds.) The apartments run from studio to lavish three- and four-bedroom units. You are told everything you want to know: whether they have dishwashers and washing machines, whether they have elevators or you will have to leg it, whether the toilet is separate from the bathroom -- that kind of information. Ours this time had two small double bedrooms, a large dining room/living room area with parquet floors, beautiful molding on the ceiling, and two (decorative) fireplaces. Some of the paintings you might not have chosen yourself, but it's a far cry from motel art. Both the apartments we have rented were comfortable but not elegant.

Chez Vous takes long-term leases on its apartments because it must make sizable investments in furniture and appliances. (French beds are shorter and narrower than American beds, and must be replaced.) Our place this time, "Caprice," has a dishwasher, washing machine, coffee maker, toaster, electronic orange juicer, and (tiny) microwave oven, features not found in the ordinary Paris apartment.

Sharyl Repert and her husband started Chez Vous eighteen years ago, but the business really caught on ten years back when the dollar was low and Paris hotel prices had started on their dizzy upward spiral. Mrs. Repert says she may hear of three hundred apartments a year but come up with only ten usable ones, either because the others are in the wrong areas (no one wants to be in the 13th or 14th arrondissement), because there's no market for a fourth-floor flat in an elevator-less building, or because the floor plans are "simply too wacky" to be worth bothering about. Who are her clients? People like me who have lived in Paris and are hopelessly in love with France, which is easy, and with the French, which is harder, but also young couples with children who find greater freedom in an apartment than in a hotel.

You can take an apartment for as little as three nights or as long as you want. The rents run from $1,000-plus a week for a a studio or one-bedroom up to nearly $3,000 a week for a lavish four-bedroom spread. There is a slight price break if you take an apartment for two or three weeks. In addition you can pay a hefty but not outrageous price for linens, telephone, and maid service. (We had a maid in for two hours once a week to change the linen, vacuum, etc. She also ran our first wash and instructed us on the intricacies of French washing machines.)