She finds a place to call maison, sweet maison

When I decided to move here, I thought finding an apartment would be a nightmare. I’d heard they were tiny and pricey. And I wanted to have a place waiting for me when I got here. But how to find one from far away and sight unseen?

Now, happily ensconced in a little Left Bank duplex, I know it isn’t difficult to rent an apartment here or, I presume, other European capitals (which I’d go about finding the same way).

I started cautiously, by listing my L.A. apartment with two home exchange agencies, HomeExchange.com in Hermosa Beach and the San Francisco-based Invented City. For about $50, you offer your apartment or home (with or without pictures) and state your desired destination and duration of stay on the agency’s Internet site. If things work out, you move into someone’s place while they stay in yours, taking the hotel bills out of travel.

Some years ago, I exchanged my New York studio for a one-bedroom in the Trastevere section of Rome with the help of Invented City. There were a few glitches, but the two weeks I spent in the Eternal City were blissful.

This time, though, I wasn’t the optimum home exchange candidate because I couldn’t be flexible. I got scads of e-mail offers, but most were for short stays or different places, as in: “Hi, I know you said Paris, but would you consider London?” No. It was Paris or bust. I wanted to be near all the things we City of Light devotees dream about and to pay the rent in dollars, not euros, given the currently oppressive exchange rate. I didn’t care whether there was a concierge or elevator -- climbing stairs sounded like good exercise -- but I needed a furnished place in a pleasing neighborhood with high-speed Internet access, space for the occasional overnight guest and plenty of light.

As the home-swap e-mails dwindled, I realized I would have to give up my L.A. apartment. So I began contacting every Paris hand I knew for advice, including Sandra Gustafson, author of “Great Eats Paris” and “Great Sleeps Paris.” She told me about RothRay Paris Apartments, a small company that specializes in furnished rentals for English-speakers.

Passing through Paris late last fall on my way home from Italy, I met with Ray Lampard of RothRay. He didn’t have anything I could rent for eight months solid because most of his apartments had already been contracted to vacationers for shorter stays in the popular spring and summer tourist seasons. Furthermore, he disabused me of the notion that I’d be able to get a furnished one-bedroom in Paris for about $1,500 a month, about what I paid for my unfurnished two-bedroom in L.A. With luck, he suggested, I’d find a furnished studio for $1,500 to $2,000; a one-bedroom would cost more like $2,000 to $2,500.

These are premium prices, I’ve since discovered, for furnished apartments in only the most central, desirable areas. The average Parisian pays less and lives farther out. For instance, you can find an unfurnished one-bedroom near the Parc Montsouris, in the southern part of the city, but inside the Peripherique (the ring road that encircles Paris proper), for about $1,250.

Before I left, Lampard gave me a few leads, including a Parisian agency, De Circourt Associates, which put together an interesting list of possibilities for me. But by the time I received it, I’d decided to rely on my own wits to find something by turning over every stone on the beach and putting out an all-points bulletin among my colleagues and friends. I made phone calls and drafted e-mails. I took a French class at the Alliance Francaise in L.A., where I dogged the bulletin board.

My tax man came up with someone who had an apartment in Paris to let, and friends who’d lived in Paris last year told me about FUSAC, a free, English-language magazine full of classified ads, distributed in Paris and available on the Internet.

One prospective home swapper offered to rent me his place near the Gare St. Lazare outright (he’d decided to move to Stockholm instead of L.A.), and my sister-in-law suggested I look at the classifieds in the Ivy League college alumni magazines.

Yale’s is on the Web (www.yalealumnimagazine.com), and that’s where I found my best prospects: a studio in Montmartre for $1,450 and another on the north edge of the Marais for $1,850. A one-bedroom in the heart of the Marais for $2,400 interested me, as did a Left Bank duplex for $2,500. In each case, I was pleased to hear they wanted the rent in dollars and I found I could negotiate a lower price because I needed a place for an extended period of time.

I arranged for my sister Martha, who lives in Brussels, to see some of the places I liked best. One cold, inhospitable day in January, she made the 90-minute train trip, then hit the streets with my list. Before returning home that evening, she managed to see four apartments and walk by another.

Ultimately, the choice came down to the tiny but affordable Marais studio and the duplex, which is, financially, a stretch. But it is lovely. It has a terrace where I’ve potted geraniums, a dishwasher, a garret-y sort of bedroom under the eaves, a bathtub, high-speed Internet access for my computer and a washer-dryer. And the neighborhood is delightful.

Of course, there are things to get used to. There’s no intercom downstairs, so I give people the door code and they buzz themselves in, then climb the staircase and ring the bell at my apartment door. I’m four narrow, spiraling flights up from the ground floor, 70 uneven, wood-beam steps in all, which discourages the purchase of large boxes of laundry detergent. The cranky washer-dryer can handle about three articles of clothing per cycle. To get the high-speed Internet access, a French telephone company workman came and shared his miserable cold. Last Friday I blew a fuse, leaving my living and dining rooms in the dark all weekend.

But what can I say? I am living in Paris. I can walk to the Pont Royal in minutes and see the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and Notre Dame by turning slowly around. It took a little doing, but do I really have to tell you it was worth it?

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Finding a home away from home

De Circourt Associates,

11 Rue Royale, Paris 75008; 011-33-1-43-12-98-00, www.homes-paris.com.

HomeExchange.com, P.O. Box 787, Hermosa Beach, 90254; (800) 877-8723 or (310) 798-3864, www.homeexchange.com.

FUSAC, 26 Rue Benard, Paris 75014; 011-33-1-56-53-54-54, www.fusac.org.

The Invented City;

(415) 846-7588, www.invented-city.com.

RothRay Paris Apartments, 10 Rue Nicolas Flamel, Paris 75004; 011-33-1-48-87-13-37,

rothray.free.fr.

Susan Spano is spending several months on assignment in Paris. “Postcards From Paris” is posted at www.latimes .com/susanspano. She welcomes comments at postcards@ latimes.com but regrets that she cannot respond to them individually.