New venue alert - the Royal Beaubourg

This nearby place used to be a naff bistro with stone cladding. Run away! Now it's gleaming with white marble on the outside and a monochrome/cavalcade-of-colour mix inside, with fabric used instead of wallpaper even on the ceiling.

We're not sure it's entirely successful, but full marks for trying.

As for the food, we haven't tried it out yet (the reviews seem to indicate it's possibly a little plain and overpriced), but you might like to go for early evening drinks.

Here are a few more shots...

You can find this and loads of other cool establishments within spitting distance of the apartment on our magical Google map here: tinyurl.com/nearthegreatapartment

And I drink to get drunk

TimeOut Paris have very helpfully released a new map of the 100 best bars in Paris.  Turns out I've only been to about 20 of of them, which means there are still a lot of cocktails with my name on in the city. Hurrah!



It's a deliciously lop-sided affair (with next to nothing in the south and west of the city) and all a bit bewildering if you don't know Paris, so which choices do we agree with in the area around the Great Apartment?

Well, the Troisième Lieu is raucous fun if you like kitsch music and a good mix of people (including partying lesbians). The Experimental Cocktail Club is always fun, although the security guy on the door is hardly friendly.

Andy Wahloo we've told you about before, and Candelaria is a bit of fun because the bar is 'secret' - you have to walk through the tiny restaurant and pass through a door to enter. Shame they didn't mention Chez Jeanette...

Here's a closer look at the area around us. Click here for the full-size map.

The Arts et Métiers museum

Once again, with six months between posts, I can't seriously call this a blog any more. More of an embarrassment. Anyway...

It's no secret that Paris is overflowing with museums. Just the Louvre would take you a few days to fully explore (by the way, there's loads of exciting stuff going on there at the moment, with new interactive 3D guides and a brand new Islamic Arts wing opening in September).

We have plenty of favourite museums, and I'll be writing more about them before too long, but one of them just happens to be five minutes from the apartment (here). It's the Musée des Arts et Métiers, the inventions museum which is fascinating not only for the exhibits but also the building itself.

It's one of the most surreal museums I know. Surreal as in airplanes hanging from a monumental staircase and cars displayed vertically in an old church.

It's also extremely diverse, starting with craftsmanship, moving on to civil engineering such as architecture and construction, followed by transportation (of all kinds), electronics, computing and a lot more. There is some seriously crazy shit in there.

There's even a really ancient relief map of Paris that shows the Great Apartment! Well, rue de Montmorency anyway.

Exploring the place is pretty great, as the circuit takes you up weird staircases, into the roof space and even into a church. It's just nuts.

And despite all the amazing inventions, huge machines and technical achievements, my favourite exhibit is... a toaster.

It's just such a simple system, with an element on each of the four sides, and holders for four slices of bread. When one side is done, you simply turn the button on the top and the slices all flip round to toast the other side. Genius stuff! Shame they don't make them like this any more. It's adorable and very clever.

If you want to see more, check out the blog post I did for the Paris Newsblog here. It includes, at the bottom of the page, a slideshow of all my photos, plus details of opening hours and admission prices.

This is definitely one museum you shouldn't miss when in Paris!

(Lots of) New stuff at the apartment

The posts on this blog have become so few and far between that an apology would seem ridiculous.

Many of you might not know, but as well as looking after our two apartments I do actually have a job which keeps me pretty busy, and as part of it involves being on the web a lot, it's sometimes difficult to find the time and motivation to write here.

Anyway...

Since the last post, many things have changed/evolved. There was a "massage café" nearby that I wanted to write about. Then it closed. There was a sweet/interesting little shop that did sculpted busts much like you see in museums. It closed too. It seems that by the time I get round to writing about the neighbourhood, everything has changed! Shame on me.

At the apartment, there have been some changes and improvements. We bought a new vacuum cleaner. Yay! In line with our eco-policy, it uses 25% less electricity and 80% of it can be recycled. Emptying the dust out of old one was like some fiendish puzzle, but with this one you just pull the collector. Simple. A thing of beauty it is indeed.

However, you probably won't be using it at all; we've changed the cleaning policy at the apartment. Up until now, guests could either choose to clean the place themselves before leaving, or pay extra for cleaning to be done for them. We thought that people would look after the place better if they knew they would be tidying it before departure.

However, despite making valiant efforts (most of the time), extra cleaning was always required afterwards, and in the end we had to hire a cleaning lady to help out (I just don't have the time). We bore the cost of this for quite a while, but experience has shown us that all our guests take very great care of the place, and many would prefer not to have the hassle of cleaning up before they go, so now the cleaning fee (currently 50 euros) is obligatory for all new bookings.

(I have to say, we were also slightly concerned about the number of people who used our soft, colourful bamboo towels to clean the bathroom. With bleach. This gave them a really nasty tie-dye look that obliged us to replace them each time.)

Also, we were recently away on holiday in an apartment, and the cleaning fee was more than a night's rental, so we think the charge is pretty reasonable! It just about covers the costs of cleaning, and we don't make a profit on it.

In other news, we've replaced the cable TV box for the latest version available (took 6 months to arrive, then didn't work!). The main difference is a swank new menu when you switch it on, funky new rubber remote, web browser access for those who haven't got a laptop with them, and - the main attraction - Blu-ray playback.

Now, at last, we have HD video in the apartment. Hurrah!

Also, as part of the renovation of the building's stairwell, the electricity supply has been updated and the water supply has been changed too. This meant that the cleaning lady couldn't vacuum one day and had to clean in the dark (no electricity), and another she had to clean the place without any water (using her own bottled water no less). It also meant a fantastic amount of dust. Hopefully no other major changes will be necessary.

We've also replaced the rug in the living room (it was starting to look a bit dull), changed the continental quilt for a fluffier, warmer one, and changed all the pillows (they had gone a little flat). The pillows and quilt both use fibres produced with reduced CO₂ emissions and have no feathers in them.

Oh, and in the kitchen, we've added a toaster (about a year after one guest suggested we do so). Sorry we didn't get round to that a little quicker...

Next addition should be the funky new Dyson heater. We already have their cool air fan, but the new edition both heats and cools, meaning we could swap two machines for one. I think the design of it will go well with the apartment - it just screams 21st century phallic, don't you think?

Despite being horrifically expensive, it'll be blowing hot and cold your way sometime soon.