Books, Arts & Manners: Paris, Apartment-Style

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 métro 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.

PL

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Priscilla L. Buckley

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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 métro 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.