Appartement Rue Pascal

The owner of the Rue Pascal apartment is a professor at NYU who bought the flat a few years ago since she was frequently in Paris doing research on problems of adolescent immigrants in the outskirts of the city. She is there a few months out of the year and rents it out, with the help of a Chinese neighbor/friend, when she is back home in NY. It's a good sized one bedroom apartment with a nice bathroom with tub and a separate kitchen that's pretty well stocked. In the living room is a TV with videos and a laptop with high speed internet use. There is also a phone with free calls to the USA, Canada, Australia and throughout Europe. She also has a lot of books on Paris in English and some very cute art that she's collected from her work/travels in Africa. She also quilts in her spare time and uses one wall as a space to layout patterns she's working on to see how well they go together. She makes a coup de grace with having an outlet converter for any appliance in the known universe.

As for the neighborhood, it is architectually just what you would expect from Paris - street corner bakeries and cafes with sidewalk tables, but it is away from the high density tourist areas. If you're looking for a local experience, or want to practice your French in an area where many shopkeepers haven't learned the English basics to keep up with their clientele, this is the place. It is about a 5 minute walk to the south side of the 5th Arrondissement (the Latin Quarter), famous for the Mosque of Paris, the Pantheon, and the historic Sorbonne University and there are two subway stations in walking distance. Her building is fairly modern, and faces an inner parking space so it's very quiet and gets a good deal of light. Nearby is the famous outdoor market on Rue Mouffetard. Quoted from LaRue herself, "....is a slice of French life that is not to be missed (but avoid on weekends if you don't want to get trampled by tourists). You can buy everything you need for a picnic -- cheeses, breads, gorgeous desserts, wines, and can do dinner at least two ways -- buy already cooked chicken, roast potatoes, etc. from the "traiteur" or go chat with the folks in the fish market, at the butcher's, and in the fruit and vegetable markets to get good advice on doing it "from scratch." Prices are "correct" as they say in French, and merchants will treat you like a regular after you stop in 2 or 3 consecutive days."