We thought it was a purely English phenomenon. However, Bed & Breakfast has become at huge hit in France, yes even in Paris, where Parisians hire out rooms and serve homemade jam for breakfast. Vi took the grand tour and found both luxury, four-poster beds and funny people.
At home with Jean-Luc
Behind a small carved oak door in rue Charlot, in a 17th century town house right at the centre of Le Marais. You ring the door bell at Marchand, and when you’ve scaled the curved staircase it feels like you are visiting a boarding house for artists in provincial France.
Here are large windows overlooking the street and detached beams. Luscious parquet flooring, a wonderful old fireplace, a painting of an ancestor and green leather furniture of the worn out kind filled with colorful pillows. Plus, obviously, a bulky library, a gold mirror and a piano.
This is where Jean-Luc and Denise Marchand live with their three grown-up children. Until recently Jean-Luc was a businessman in the financial sector. Educated at New York University’s Stern School of Business and with a global career in the large consultant firms. But suddenly he felt fed up with plane trips and the train ride to the City in London, and at the age of 50 he quit his job and opened a Bed & Breakfast at his home address. He never regretted the decision.
The three rooms are almost always booked and Jean-Luc clearly thrives in the role as host. He likes to get up early to buy croissants for the guests and his plentiful breakfast has already been mentioned in The Sunday Times. Jean-Luc produces the honey himself at his country house in Perigord and the jam is homemade by Mrs. Denise. She is a psychotherapist and owns a practice in town.
The three rooms are located on the first floor and have a private entrance, private bathroom and lots of fine details. Like a sink, carved in dark grey granite and placed on top of a big heavy oak log.
The most beautiful room is the Enclos des Templiers - named after the fortress built by the Templars in the Marais in the thirteenth century. In this room there are terracotta floors, detached beams and a view of the small inner courtyard typical of Paris’ closely built historical center.
Rates for a room: 125 € a night for two people.
Denise & Jean-Luc Marchand, 63, rue Charlot, 75003 Paris.
www.bonne-nuit-paris.com
In the pink house at Montparnasse
Marie-Martine is a former travel journalist and Michel is a painter. The couple inhabits the two top floors of a pink brick building close to Montparnasse and here – in the Maison Hippolyte – they hire out one of their rooms: 30 square meters with a private entrance and bathroom, equipped with a French iron bed, a paint-stripped country style cupboard and the light streaming in from the big windows.
The couple has traveled extensively and they have stayed at tons of Bed & Breakfasts. Perhaps as a result of this, they have been able to create exactly the home-like, cozy nerve, which is the whole point of private accommodation. The breakfast alone is worth the stay. Freshly baked baguette, homemade cakes, Marie-Martine’s home made jam, juice, yoghurt, apple compote and steaming hot tea from the Palais des Thés.
The room offers a fine view of the street life and in the evening of the Eiffel Tower, which sparkles with 20,000 light bulbs every whole hour.
The price is almost touching: 85 € a night for two – including the brilliant breakfast. But make reservations well in advance, because Marie-Martine and Michel have already been mentioned in both French and foreign medias, so their one room is in demand.
La Maison Hippolyte, 27, rue Hippolyte-Maindron, 75014 Paris.
High standards in the biscuit factory
It was an old dream that last year inspired Marie Funke and her husband to buy the manager’s residence close connected to an old biscuit factory in the 13th arrondissement.
Marie Funke, who had worked in the hotel business for 20 years, wanted to create an exclusive Bed & Breakfast where she could spoil her guests while having more time to spend with her children. She succeeded.
La Villa Paris is high class through and through. Four spacious rooms with trendy English wallpaper, flat screen TVs and designer lamps that light up when you turn the base.
At Marie Funke’s, the breakfast is served in the salon. All the guests sit together around the big table and in no time the conversation ripples across the table while Mrs Funke discretely tiptoes around with extra raisin buns for all.
She has named her four rooms Opera, Concorde, Bastille and Champs-Elysées. They’re all comfortable, but if you are on a honeymoon then go for the Champs-Elysées, which has a huge marble bathroom with a jacuzzi.
The one thing you could possibly wish was different is the location, because Paris’ 13th arrondissement is normally not known for its charm. However, Marie’s Chambre d’Hotes is actually rather nicely located by a small square and taking the high standard of the rooms into account, the price is very reasonable: 135 to 160 € a night for at double room.
La Villa Paris, 33, rue de la Fontaine à Mulard, 75013 Paris.
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