two nights in paris with onefinestay.

This post is sponsored by onefinestay, “pioneers of handmade hospitality.”

Luxury is a relative term. There are times of life when a stay in a questionably clean hotel room with a shared hall shower and no front desk to speak of feels like a luxury. But there are other times when luxury means having a dazzling home to call your own for a few nights, complete with crisp white bed linens, and personalized service every step of the way. When it’s this kind of luxury that you’re after, you’d be right to look no further than onefinestay.

We spent our two nights in Paris in one of their gorgeous homes and we’ve never felt fancier. As we quickly learned, a stay in a onefinestay home means not only the guarantee of a beautiful space to call yours for a few nights, but also a host of other luxuries not found as part of your typical vacation rental. This is not your average key-found-under-the-doormat and faint-smell-of-cat-pee situation. Rather than being left to the whims of the homeowner, onefinestay acts as your (very gracious) host themselves.

After first vetting every home they add to their roster (only one in ten make the cut and they need to pass tests ranging from mattress quality to whether there are an adequate number of bedside tables!), onefinestay swoops in.
They do everything from arranging the cleaning, to swapping out the bed linens for hotel-quality sheets and duvets, to providing essentials you might need during your stay (from dish soap and laundry detergent to shampoo and conditioner).
When we arrived, the kitchen was stocked with an array of teas and coffees and cookies and biscuits to make the short-term more manageable. There was even a little aperatif and fresh organic milk in the fridge to welcome us. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the very beginning. 

Our stay in Le Marais began with a greeting. A onefinestay ambassador met us at our doorstep. Before we left New York, we’d been able to make an invaluable special arrangement to have the apartment available to us in the early morning after our overnight flight and when we arrived a few minutes in advance, our greeter was waiting for us.
Among other useful things, she walked us through the basic tasks of getting inside the place and finding our beds (onefinestay had been kind enough to bring in a crib for Faye, that was already set up when we arrived).

In the case that anything of importance wasn’t covered during this initial meeting, we were assured that the onefinestay team was only a phone call away. And the phone? Well, onefinestay handled that too. For the duration of its rentals the company provides guests with an iPhone to use for data and local calls. The phone comes filled with local neighborhood recommendations, but also a simple and cleanly designed guide to the home itself.
When we puzzled over the buttons on the dishwasher, we checked the app and found our answer. When we couldn’t remember the code for the front door, we consulted our app and found our way in. When we needed to find a place to get croissants and more coffee and as soon as possible, we had a list of recommended places to stop right in the palm of our hand. It was all very luxurious. And all extremely helpful.

And while it’s these bits of special attention to detail and gracious hosting that sets onefinestay so markedly apart, it is, of course, also, the opportunity to stay in a home smack dab in the center of a world-class city.
It’s the joy of being able to put your child to sleep in a clean and safe spot and to sneak back to the living room for a champagne toast. It’s realizing that you’ve slept half the day away, and not much minding because what a delightful place you’ve just woken up in (and if you have a question about how to use the coffee maker under the influence of jet lag, the answer’s only a phone call away). 
More than anything, onefinestay allows you to have all of the independence of staying in a home on your own, without any of the feeling of being lost at sea in a new place.