Maison Zen
When researching places to stay way back in May I borrowed Pauline Frommer’s Paris from the library and it quickly became my favorite guide out of all the ones I have looked at. In the guide there was a section on unusual places to stay and there we found Maison Zen.
Views from the front door of Maison Zen. They have a little enclosed courtyard and beyond the green door is the general courtyard which is shared with the other buildings. The general courtyard is basically used to get from the street to your building. I wish I had taken a picture of the giant door that you enter through. Oh well, here is a picture of someone else's giant door.
Some more views from the front door/porch of Maison Zen:
Looking to the left...
Looking straight ahead...
The building in the foreground was having reconstruction work done all week. I think that they were stripping off the old exterior which is very noisy work that echoes all through the courtyard. It didn't bother me but my Dad is a light sleeper so every morning when they started at 8:30am he woke up.
A window facing into the courtyard. I have a thing for the windows in Paris but I'm trying to pare the pictures down to a reasonable number.
Directly left and up from the porch. I thought that this was really cute. I think that it is part of the apartment of the people who own the place.
Hanging plant...
Flowers in the courtyard...
And finally the stairs that you see when you step inside the door. I also love old staircases and this picture doesn't really do it justice.
We stayed in a room with one double bed, a kitchenette and a bathroom. They also provided us an extra twin bed which was one of those chairs that folds out to be a bed. There was a tv and phone in our room. Local calls were free but you have to buy a phone card from a tabac before making any international calls. More on tabacs another day.
A note on bathrooms in France: For some reason many places (including Maison Zen) have the shower head low down on the stall wall, like where the water would come out to run a bath. I don't get it. France is a civilized country. Why would they put their showerheads down below their knees? Can anybody enlighten me? Here is a picture from the Maison Zen website.
Moving on from the bathroom, it was clean, comfortable and quiet except for the workmen during the day. There isn’t an elevator but the person who let us in was eager to help us carry our bags. However, it still wasn’t the best thing for my father who has a multitude of of heel and ankle problems. Oh! A note for those who have not studied French, in France the first floor is always called the ground floor. Thusly what we call the second floor in the US is the first floor in France. My Dad thought that we were going to be staying on the second floor but by US standards we were on the third floor. One of the many things that I forgot to tell him until after he found it out for himself... lol.
At Maison Zen they request that you leave your shoes in a cubby in the entryway (just to the left of the stairs in the picture) to both keep things clean and reduce noise but it seemed like it would have been okay to wear light slip-on house shoes. It was a very odd feeling to leave my room without my shoes. I kept on feeling like I was forgetting something.
Overall it was a good place to stay and in a great neighborhood. I wish that we had organized ourselves a bit more to actually shop for food so that we could use the kitchenette. We ended up just eating out for all our meals but it would have been nice to cook since we had a stove.