This apartment has great advantages and a few shortcomings. PROS: Fantastic location, in a building facing the Seine and Île de la Cité, in St. Germain next to the Latin Quarter. Apartment was mostly very clean when we arrived, and is VERY quiet, as it faces an interior courtyard and there was very little noise from neighbors during our 11-night stay. It offers a reasonably comfortable bed (harder than our bed at home in USA, with just a sheet right on the mattress with no topper), plenty of shelves, drawers and hanging closets, a functional kitchen with refrigerator, microwave, stove and oven, a small combo clothes washer/dryer, drying rack, iron and ironing board, a nice flat screen TV in the living room area and another we did not use in the bedroom, a reasonably sized walk-in, glass-enclosed shower with one small sink and vanity with under-counter storage, and a small separate toilet room.
CONS: Apartment is not at all charming, as it has almost no décor and all hard surfaces. There are no area rugs, no art on the walls, no decorative pillows or runner on the bed, just minimal furnishings. They did not provide paper towels, napkins, Kleenex or foil for the oven, and they did not provide enough dish soap, hand soap, bath gel-shampoo, laundry soap or toilet paper to last through our stay, and only 2 medium-sized bath towels and 2 hand towels. We rushed to a nearby convenience store just after arrival to buy a few of these necessities and bottled water, and we laundered our towels twice during our stay. There were no instructions or manuals, so we had go search online quite a bit to find a manual for the specific model of washer/dryer in this apartment. Two of the light switches in the bedroom do nothing, but others worked. The kettle and coffee maker still had water left over from a prior stay; we cleaned out the kettle before using it. The oven had bread crumbs in the door and greasy metal trays, so I cleaned one tray before using it to heat food. The batteries were dead in one of TV remote.
These are all relatively small details. Overall, this apartment is a good, pratical place to stay, but for the price, it could offer a little charm and include basic amenities. We stay in VRBO flats often, and most offer those little extras that make you feel at home and looked after.
