By sheer good fortune, we find ourselves in the happiest of circumstances. Our apartment lies on the third floor, close to the top end of Ile St-Louis.
It has a purple door and a red carpet on the tightly winding staircase that I have time to study because the climb always leaves me short of breath, and bent. The apartment faces into a courtyard rather than the street outside which is the quieter of the two, although this is not a rambunctious neighbourhood, and the bells of Notre Dame wake me regardless.
Even if they didn't, I'd be up with the sparrows. The courtyard is home to a bakery and the smell of fresh croissants, baguettes and fruit tarts wafting upward in the warm summer air banishes even the most agreeable of dreams, and sends my feet flying down those stairs.
Now excuse me if I seem to be suffering a mild attack of the Jane Austens, but 19th century prose seems to fit Paris's 4th arrondissement, and Ile St-Louis most particularly. Ile St-Louis is a mini treasure, yet it comes in a plain brown paper wrapper.
It sits in the lee of the Ile de la Cité like a small and slightly unimpressive barge being towed by its far grander neighbour. While the Ile de la Cité is a stronghold of spiritual and temporal power - home to Notre Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, the Conciergerie, the spectacular Palais de Justice - Ile St-Louis is home to nothing much more than about six thousand lucky Parisians.
It is also almost totally overlooked by visitors. Only a fraction of those who queue beneath the rose window of Notre Dame will wander to the lovely rose gardens at the back of the church. Fewer still turn around and notice the island on the far side of Pont St-Louis, and what they see does not exactly invite investigation.
At the top end of the island there's a couple of cafes and a salon de thé, with the narrow rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile disappearing like a corridor down the middle of the island - and that's it. But to a comforting degree, the island is almost totally self sufficient, a small and neighbourly world with consolations for body and soul.
Immediately outside the door of our apartment is a patisserie - the shopfront for those heavenly smells that wake me up each day. A few paces in the other direction is a cheese shop full of runny delights and opposite, a grocery, where Camilla, my daughter, witnessed this exchange:
American Tourist: "Do you speak English?"
Shop assistant: "Non"
AT (speaking louder): "Okay. We want two percent milk. Do you have that?"
Within 50 metres of the front door on rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile there's a wine shop, a swanky gift shop, a creperie, a chocolaterie and several shops selling Berthillon glaces, which is to ice cream what Las Vegas is to losing money.
Directly opposite our front door is Mon Vieil Ami, an offshoot of three-Michelin-star chef Antoine Westermann's Buerehiesel, and a name to titillate the gourmand's taste buds. Down the street and across rue des Deux Ponts is Jean-Paul Gardil, possibly the most celebrated butcher in all of Paris.
All the miscellaneous services are here too - hairdressers, pharmacies, antique shops, art galleries, a newspaper shop and a post office. Edmund White, the prolific man of letters who lived here in the 1980s, reported that some elderly residents would leave the island only a few times a year, when they would announce that they were "going to Paris".
Not that I'm even tempted to abandon Paris - heavens - because the other great thing about the island is its location - smack in the middle of just about everything there is worth seeing. A five-minute stroll to the north and I'm in the Marais, the boutiquified gay quarter of Paris and home to the Pompidou Centre and the Picasso Museum, the heart-melting Place des Voges and countless brasseries, cafes and restaurants.
The same distance in the other direction and I'm in the Latin Quarter, poking around in Shakespeare & Co for a book and en route to the Luxembourg Gardens. I can saunter down to the Quai de Montebello and catch a BatoBus, the riverboat, along the Seine to the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay or the Eiffel Tower.
The small and funky village of St-Paul, Rue Oberkampf, the polar centre of cool, the snazzy shops of Boulevard St-Germain, the pick of the private galleries around the Ecole des Beaux Arts - all are within walking distance.
An apartment is the way to go in Paris. Ours was a single-bedroom affair with a sofa bed in the lounge room, yet within its modest dimensions it had all that was needed, including a kitchen with a dishwasher and a washer/dryer.
From research to payment, the Internet transaction was totally fuss-free. The price for a week in peak season was €1 130 (R12 000) including all charges, which is far less than you'd pay for a hotel room of the same calibre in that location.
Ours came from the extensive stable of Paris Stay (www.paristay.com), but there are several similar Paris-based agencies that specialise in short-term apartment rentals, including Absolu Living (www. absoluliving.com) which concentrates on gay rentals in the Marais district.
The best part about having an apartment here is that it brings with it a glorious sense of ownership. I belong, even if it's only fleeting, so pardon me if I jangle my keys a little as I approach our apartment.
And here's a confession. When I go downstairs to the bakery for a baguette to have with our evening reblochon, I often take a stroll along our street. This is quite unnecessary. It's three steps from apartment door to bakery - but I'm indulging myself in a little fantasy.
"I live here," says the baguette tucked under my arm as I dodge mad cyclists and avoid eye contact with camera-toting tourists who are - oh no - zeroing in on me, a local, moi, and - ca alors! - they're wanting directions.
"The Eiffel Tower? Sorry, no, I would 'elp but I do not speak Anglais."
If you go...
Paris in the Zone
The Marais: Former Jewish ghetto now an uber cool boutique and café scene, the navel of gay Paris and home to the heavenly Place des Vosges and the nookish village of St Paul.
Latin Quarter: The university district, crowded and slightly seedy but with some gem moments (Shakespeare Books, Institut du Monde Arabe), redeemed by the Jardin du Luxembourg.
Ile de la Cité: Tourist hot spot thanks to Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle, but there's peace and atmosphere around Place Dauphine.
St Germain: Paradise for the window gazer, solid with designer boutiques, art galleries and famous cafes favoured by poodle-toting Parisiennes.
1st arrondissement: So many head-turners you'll need a chiropractor - Le Louvre, Les Halles, the Palais Royal, the Tuileries, Place Vendome, Paris' swankiest shopping on rue Saint-Honoré and home to naughty Nick Sarkozy.
Pigalle: Once famous as Paris's bad-boy district made famous by the likes of Piaf and Josephine Baker and although the red light has dimmed, the Moulin Rouge and Folies-Bergère pull in the night crowds.
Champs-Elysées: Packed with tourists not quite sure why they're there. Don't bother, unless you're desperate for a Big Mac or an overpriced coffee.
7th arrondissement: Patrician Paris, dominated by the Eiffel Tower but also site of Les Invalides and Musée d'Orsay, dedicated to the Impressionists.
Montmartre: One time artists quarter spreading from the tent-top of Sacré-Coeur now a tourist trap, but wander down the back side of the basilica for a very different side of Paris.
Menilmontant/Belleville: Former grunge neighbourhood now a favourite hangout for the artsy/boho/ model set. Traces of the Mahgreb linger in the bistros and there's a lively café/nightlife scene along rue Oberkampf.