I had a chance to stay in an "apartment" right in the heart of Paris. It was just opposite the well known auction house Sotheby's and at most 50m away from the Elysee palace. Rental was EUR400 per week, I was thrilled and took that option without looking at the place as it meant SGD100 odd per night during a recent holiday I had there. When I reached the place, I was in for a nasty surprise. Unlike the buildings we have here in Singapore, there are many apartments in Paris that are still predominantly made of wood and other non concrete materials. The apartment that I stayed in was probably a bigger apartment cut out to smaller ones that are no bigger than a 4NG HDB apartment's master bedroom plus toilet. So you get a small cooking area, a place just big enough for a bed and a toilet. The ventilation was pretty bad, and the room had a scent of smoke that just doesn't go away. I heard that Parisians likes smoking, and I wouldn't be surprise looking at the amount of cigarette buds I observed littered all over the streets. The walls are rather thin and you can hear your neighbours talking and bathing. The floors are made of wood, and they are not levelled, always sloping in some direction and always creaking as you moved about. I finally understood why those aftermath pictures of WWII bombings always showed buildings where the exterior facade made or bricks were still intact and everything else was burnt to the ground, that's because almost everything within the building right up to the ceiling was probably made of combustible wood and plaster. There were 2 and 3 star hotels I visited and the condition was almost the same, although they looked more presentable. I have visited some apartments in New York, those that are pretty run down and dark, but at least they had concrete floors, maybe the plaster walls were similar. I guess it might have something to do with the fact that most buildings you see in the heart of Paris were built more than a hundred years ago. The facades are beautiful, but the interior really something else, and it seemed normal for them. I have also visited other bulidings in Paris that were all concrete and everything like what we have in Singapore, but these were generally the offices, department stores and expensive hotels. There are actually modern and better conditioned apartmets on the outskirts of Paris as I saw them when travelling to and from the airport, but my short stay did not afford me a chance to visit one. A simple way to find out more about an apartment would be to ask when the apartment was built or if it has concrete floors, but I don't know if Parisians will feel offended by such questions. So if you have not visited Paris before, I would suggest that you view the apartment before making any long term commitments.
