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An Apartment in Montmartre

Rue de Steinkerque

ABOVE: The dining room and library of our rented holiday flat near Sacré-Coeur. INSET BELOW: The building entrance on the Rue de Steinkerque.

By Durant Imboden

In April, 2006, we rented a furnished vacation apartment in Montmartre from Home Rental Connections, a booking agency that offered several properties in the 18th Arrondissement. We chose a flat called "St. Pierre" on Rue de Steinkerque, a short north-south pedestrian street that runs from the Anvers Métro station to the staircase leading up to Sacré Coeur.

Although Montmartre was farther from the center of Paris than our usual haunts, we chose it this time for two reasons:

We were arriving from London on Eurostar, and Montmartre was within easy walking distance of the Gare du Nord.
We were in the mood for a change of pace, and Montmartre--which was an independent village until 1860--offered an experience much different from the more centrally located arrondissements along the Seine. (For an account of an earlier apartment stay, see An Apartment in Paris, which describes a flat on the Île de la Cité.)

Reserving the apartment

Booking the flat was a straightforward process: A few months before our trip, we checked availability and completed an e-form on the Paris Rental Connections Web site. An initial deposit of 50% secured the rental; the remaining 50% was due a month before our arrival, with a refundable security deposit due two weeks before we occupied the apartment. On the day of our arrival (see next page), all we had to do was show up with enough cash to pay the modest cleaning fee.

Next page: Arrival and check-in

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Our apartment's agent: Michele Vannoni