Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Summer Rental for Students, Aix en Provence

Hello!

As some of you might have noticed from my previous postings here on the Europe forum,
I'm a student going to be studying abroad at aix-en-provence this summer. The study abroad program in which I am enrolled in has a demi-pension lodging plan in which students are assigned to live with host families with a weekly meal plan (usually these are rooms in the houses of families with grown children, or single mothers renting out a room). It sounds great, but the problem is, I have a small dog (a tiny 5 lb chihuahua, very well-behaved, fully potty trained indoors, and hardly makes a peep of a sound), and I'd like to bring the dog with me. The host families won't allow dogs, and now I have to consider my options and need your wise advice:

1. Don't bring my dog. That would mean flying back to my home in California to give my dog to my parents, and then flying to France. This would require extra money for airplane tickets, and extra time to fly. Time is a major issue for me here since I don't have many days between my last day of classes of the the spring semester and the starting date of the summer program.

2. Find an apartment sublet for the summer that would accept pets. That would mean having to do a lot research myself and call landlords about a region I don't know very well. The apartment rental may be very expensive (remember I'm on a student's budget) because it's high season and housing in Aix is in high demand. I've also thought about finding potential roommate / apartment share situations, but this would require a lot of planning and it's very hard to find a roommate when you've never been to the place nor know the people who want to share the apartment with you.

3. Go with a B&B that might accept pets. The problem with this is that many B&B's don't allow stays for more than 30 days (correct me if I'm wrong).

4. Go with an extended stay resident hotel. The problem is that it is more expensive than B&B. I checked the Residhome Apparthotel website (www.residhome.com) and the cost is 54 euros a night (and the US Dollar is weak right now...) The positive side is they do allow pets with a small daily charge, and they have all the amenities of a hotel so although it is expensive, I wouldn't have to worry about costs for toiletry and household items.

5. Go with a hotel. This is the last option. It will be expensive and they won't allow extended stays.

6. I should note that I've looked into the youth hostel option and they don't allow extended stays.

Any advice from Fodorites who have experience with a similiar situation would be very much appreciated!

Thank You!