Why Paris and why one place for a complete month? A couple years ago a friend and I decided to vacation for a month in Europe. We initially planned to spend the trip in France and Italy and began planning in earnest. We started breaking the month into days and places to decide when we should be where and for how long. How many days should we plan for Paris, how many for Provence, and on and on.

• Because we would be together for a month, we would need our own space to keep our sanity. This meant two hotel rooms or a two bedroom apartment.
• If we stayed in a hotel, we would have no place to sit and spend time together except a bedroom. An apartment would give us a living room.
• In a hotel we’d have to eat out for every meal. An apartment would enable us to eat in both for saving money and for convenience.
• In a hotel we would have to deal with laundry but an apartment would have a washer/dryer.
• A hotel would have maid service so we’d have to pick up after ourselves in an apartment.
• A hotel might have a concierge to help us when our French failed us and we’d be on our own in an apartment.
• The apartment was likely to cost less unless we stayed in a really off the beaten path hotel. An apartment in a prime area was affordable.

• Staying in Paris for a long time meant we could relax and not rush through our sightseeing. We were able to spend a day now and then just relaxing and exploring the neighborhood.
• We were in Paris long enough so we could see more than the top few tourist sites. I enjoyed visiting more out of the way places such as the Catacombs where the bones from many old cemeteries were relocated in tunnels beneath Paris and the Pere Lachaise cemetery where many famous people including Jim Morrison are interred.
• Getting around was so easy on the Metro. I was an expert by the end of the month.
• We had time to seek out unusual things to do. We went to a play in French in a small theatre in Montmartre. I didn’t understand it at all but it was fun anyway. One of the highlights of the trip was a concert of Gregorian chant in Notre Dame Cathedral. We found out about both of these as we strolled the streets by looking at paper pamphlets posted on walls .
• We were not limited to Paris. We had taken a laptop with us (a must!) and found tours that would pick us up at our door and take us along with several other people on van tours to destinations around France and even further. We took wonderful day trips to Bruges, Belgium, to the Loire Valley to tour chateaux and to Giverny to visit the home and gardens of Claude Monet.  

• Because we were in an apartment we had no one to get a taxi for us when time to leave for the airport. In Paris, you don’t hail a cab on the street like you do in the U.S. There are designated taxi stands or you can call a taxi. The taxi stand near our apartment was closed because of street construction and calling was a challenge to our poor French skills. My friend did manage to find and hail one on the street while I was inside trying to call one.
• Although the apartment was okay it did not have the furniture shown on the web site. We looked for a comfortable apartment in which we could relax with books for the evening after a busy day of sightseeing. Our apartment did not have the sofa shown in the photos and instead had an uncomfortable futon-like settee. We complained during the trip and after and finally got a partial refund from Rentvillas.com.
• I booked an apartment with wireless internet access and it failed after a day or two. Luckily the other tenants in the building did not have secure networks so I used theirs.

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