How to: Enjoy Paris for free | Matador Network

Curated by Stillmind on June 6th, 2013

Youthful Fortune (excerpt)

By lucky, youthful fortune, a friend of ours turned out to have a crumbling apartment in the Latin Quarter that we could stay in, as long as we were out by the end of the weekend—he’d recently sold the place and new ownership was soon to take effect.
On our last evening, we were having a meal on the mattress–cheese, pâté, wine–when a girl came into the apartment to take away all of the furniture.
It was embarrassing—our friend had forgotten to tell us she would be coming, and had forgotten to tell her that we would be there—but in broken language we all apologized until we were weary of apologizing, and then helped her unhook the washing machine from the wall.
We slept without a mattress that night, sweating profusely in the late August heat, but it was okay, somehow—and it was free.