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Beautiful, spacious house in quiet neighbourhood below Montmartre . Two bedrooms (one room with a double bed, one room with a sofabed), a living room with dining area and garden, bathroom with bathtub and a separate toilet. The apartment sleeps four comfortably. The house is available from July 8th to August 31st 2007.

Note: we are looking for renters for at least two weeks at a time: were not set up to have people coming and going, thanks.

The house is a unique Parisian rarity: a perfectly quiet house in the city with its front facing onto a cobblestone pedestrian-only street, and its back onto the quiet greenspace and community gardens of the old Paris passenger railway (La Petite Ceinture: closed down 40 years ago). There is no car or truck traffic day or night. The house has been featured in international design magazines for its luminous pocket garden and interior design. Bedrooms and study have the original wood flooring. It is approximately 100m2, extremely light and has a lovely bright bedroom/study on the 2nd floor framed by two large windows that look forward onto the neighbouring gardens in the cobblestone alley and back onto the Petit Ceinture (the room is currently used by a journalist/writer and is filled with bookshelves & a large desk). The basement is unfinished but is comfortably decorated as a small recording/practice studio (currently used by a musician/singer and also with a large work desk).

This house would be perfect for a couple or an academic with a project to finish. It is a quiet and creative space. Our neighbours in the houses around are either retired older French couples or younger owners in a variety of artistic fields: actors, film editors, architects, writers etc.

On the traditional French shopping street nearby (rue de Poteau), which has a village feel, there is a prize-winning bakery, several excellent butchers, one of Pariss finest cheese shops, an independent wine shop stocking mostly organic wines, several lovely cafes with sunny terrasses, boutiques and florists (and a Monoprix supermarket for those less glamourous items). There are many excellent restaurants (French, Thai, African, Italian) near our street. And for those adventurous shoppers we are minutes away from Les Puces de Clignancourt the largest high end flea market in the world, where you can buy vintage clothing and historic antiques side by side, or simply have a coffee in a caf and people watch for hours (see review below). The Basilique of Sacre Coeur is a winding walk up the famous staircases that line the streets of the hill of Montmartre, on the way there youll pass a multitude of wonderful cafes and restaurants and landmarks like the Lapin Agile( where Picasso drank), the Bateau Lavoir (home of the Expressionist and Cubist art movements), and the pretty park Pinon Nora (with its children's playground and relaxing bamboo pond).

The metros close to our house give access to all of Paris: Line 4 sweeps straight through the heart of the city past Beaubourg/Pompidou Museum, Chatelet and St. Michel (for Notre Dame Cathedral) and runs every two or three minutes, and Line 12 makes a ziz-zag through the city touching off at the Opera, the Louvre, Saint-Germain shops, and the Musee d'Orsay. Were close to Jules Joffrin Metro on Line 12 and Porte de Clignancourt on line 4. The train station Gare Du Nord, where the high speed trains to London and Amsterdam arrive and depart, is approximately five minutes away on the metro and the RER (high speed commuter rail lines) leave from Gare Du Nord as well.

There is a washing machine, a well equipped kitchen, a small television, DVD and Wi fi.

The house costs 400 euros per week (minimum of two weeks) or 1300 euros for the month all inclusive. Sheets and towels and blankets etc are provided. There is a 800 euro deposit which is returned promptly at the end of your stay as long as everything is in good condition.

If youd like to see more photos of the house and the neighbourhood, then paste the link below and check out our gallery on Flickr,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/76216862@N00/

or check out a description of the 18th arrondisement on wikipidia http://wikitravel.org/en/Paris/18th_arrondissement

If you have any questions or youd like to rent the house then get a hold of us at bremner_duthie@yahoo.com


Review of Les Puces de Clignancourt:

Shopping in Paris is usually the exclusive pursuit
of those travelers with easy access to a Platinum
card. It conjures up the glittering madness of ultra-chic
shops on the Left Bank and rue Saint-Honor's
perfect Haute Couture creations, followed by champagne
dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant. But there's
a different Paris shopping experience: Welcome to
the Puce St. Ouen; the largest and oldest flea market
in Europe. Only open on the weekend, it's where you'll
find everyone in the city: from Paris hipsters to
impoverished fashionistas. And it's where you can
purchase anything: from 18th-century brocade to
used car batteries to the latest sneakers to ultra-cheap
knock offs of last weeks run-way fasions.

This flea market, the largest and oldest in Europe,
commonly called "les Puces" ("the fleas") attracts
some 150,000 visitors on an average weekend. In its
170-year-history, the "Puces" has grown to become
the 4th-most-visited site in all of France (after the
Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame and the Louvre). Youll
have to negotiate the gypsy jazz guitarists, duck into
houses dedicated to 17th C collections (ie. stuffed and
pinned and dried and pickled animals of every size
and shape), through the 'salesmen' specialising in
items picked from trash cans, between the 17th century
cut glass, pause for a drink at the smallest theatre cafe
to find the treasures hidden in the madness of the Puces.

Whether you're shopping for a sequined halter, a Beidermeir
table, a Dickensian top hat, or you simply want to sit at
a sunny table with a glass of wine, watching the parade,
the Puces is the place to be. What's more, it can provide
you with the impossible-to-set-a-price-on pleasure of
replying to "Where d'ya get that?" with "This? Oh, I found
it in a little flea market in Paris..."






email: bremner_duthie@yahoo.com