APARTHOTEL ADAGIO ACCESS PARIS REUILLY 2019 REVIEW -- Part 1

GOOD LOCATION AND PRICE POINT – BUT DESPERATELY NEEDS TO INVEST IN KEEPING ELEVATORS AND OTHER ESSENTIALS REPAIRED

Tantely Rakotoarivony, the director/general manager of the ApartHotel Adagio Access Paris Reuilly, is a good guy who emailed me back and forth a dozen times prior to our visit.

We basically needed two beds in a large apartment, but with bath bench and knowledge that one would be a wheelchair user not using accessible unit.

Tantely did great for this before and during the stay. I think he may be fighting an uphill battle due to a poor staff under him and maybe not enough budget to make needed repairs.

Let's start with the positives. The room, on 7th floor, was one of the most quiet we've ever stayed in.

The price point for a nearly 400 SF room was incredible for Paris.

The fridge, stove, coffee maker, cups, plates, flatware, etc is all very convenient.

The wet room style shower is wonderful for my wife, who uses a wheelchair for mobility.

The bath bench already being in the bathroom was helpful.

L’APPART: THE DELIGHTS AND DISASTERS OF MAKING MY PARIS HOME

DAVID LEBOVITZ’S LATEST BOOK IS A MUST-READ                                (EVEN IF YOU SKIP OVER RECIPES SHARED AT CHAPTER ENDS)

L’Appart has plenty of details, often told in sardonic humor, about life, food, culture, cost and rules of living in the culinary capital.

But it mainly focuses on the never-ending setbacks experienced by a results-oriented American in a city whose laws seem designed specifically to delay closing the deal on buying that perfect apartment…

…then going through endless torture with untrustworthy and (it turns out) incompetent contractors.

We live in Miami, so evil...careless...corrupt...disappearing contractors are actually considered the good ones!

Many here exist only in a circle of hell below corrupt/incompetent.

So we feel Lebovitz’s pain while he endures strings of five figure costs for perpetually delayed, always shoddy work worth less than four figures when the dust clears.

Will our hero live, sans nervous breakdown, to see the completion of his dream Paris kitchen in an apartment that he will own?

Find out at

https://www.amazon.com/LAppart-Delights-Disasters-Making-Paris/dp/0804188408/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&linkCode=sl1&tag=davidleboviswebs&linkId=76c7bc04325a5c6cae423c22cbec67b7&language=en_US

L’APPART: THE DELIGHTS AND DISASTERS OF MAKING MY PARIS HOME

DAVID LEBOVITZ’S LATEST BOOK IS A MUST-READ                                (EVEN IF YOU SKIP OVER RECIPES SHARED AT CHAPTER ENDS)

The author’s DavidLebovitz.com blog shared recipes, as one would expect a cookbook author to do, but it gained popularity has he also shared matter of fact tales of everyday life in a beautiful city that can be rather unforgiving in etiquette, tradition and red tape.

L’Appart (busy Paris contraction for The Apartment) comes with the bonus of recipes from an expert chef who has been featured in: Bon Appétit, Chocolatier, Food+Wine, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Travel and Leisure, The New York Times, People, Saveur and USA Today.

But for those of us who enjoy memoir over a countertop of bowls, mixers and dozens of ingredients -- it's easy to skip over, or speed read them.

My fingers were eagerly flipping pages to keep up with his perfect blend of storytelling spiced/spiked with details about peculiarities of Paris, French bureaucracy and contractors.

ZeroThreshold: Perspective from Designer Jackie Holzheimer

L’APPART: THE DELIGHTS AND DISASTERS OF MAKING MY PARIS HOME

DAVID LEBOVITZ’S LATEST BOOK IS A MUST-READ                                (EVEN IF YOU SKIP OVER RECIPES SHARED AT CHAPTER ENDS)

I have just completed L'appart and commend Chef/Blogger/Cookbook Author/ExPat in Paris David Lebovitz for his ease with the language and ability to to season trying tales with good humor.

To me, the kitchen only is a place to store, refrigerate, freeze and re-heat stuff.

So the having recipes part of the book scared me away from buying it for a half year.

Lebovitz began working in restaurants at the age of sixteen and ended up at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, working with the famed Alice Waters and co-owner, Executive Pastry Chef Lindsey Shere, who he credits as his pastry mentor.

He moved to Paris in 1999 and started an early blog to coincide with the release of his first book, Room for Dessert. 

PARIS BY WHEELCHAIR -- Part 17

PROGRESS MADE, BUT MANY CHALLENGES REMAIN

At Centre Pompidou, people with disabilities who cannot walk stairs must journey very long distances to reach one elevator that only reaches the main, first and basement floors. 

Another elevator, a very long stroll away, serves the upper floor galleries 5 and 6.  

On the opposite side of the more than one million square foot building, elevators reach only galleries 3 and 4.

The idea of forcing folks to go on tour of the building to reach elevators might have seemed cool to the architects.

Or maybe they were trying to promote fitness.

But it is a disaster for folks who push their own wheelchairs, are slow walkers, have respiratory issues or just plain are pushing 60 husbands pushing their wife's manual wheelchair all over creation -- not to see world class art -- but to just go from one floor to the other.

PARIS BY WHEELCHAIR -- Part 16

PROGRESS MADE, BUT MANY CHALLENGES REMAIN

The views are worth the price of admission to the Centre Pompidou and can be had without buying lunch, dinner or drinks from Georges.

There are stunning vistas from any number of outdoor plazas on the gallery levels.  

While the main system of transport is through see through glass tubed escalators, all of the open air observations points are accessible via elevator.

Seeing the Eiffel Tower to the southwest and Sacre Coeur atop Montmartre to the north is breathtaking.