We bought three RIVAGES accommodation guides for France to help plan our trip for three. None of them explain the difference between a suite, an apartment, and, most important, a duplex. Please help.

A duplex is one structure (house) with a center common wall used for two separate residences.Duplex homes here are usuallly two-floors (LR/DR/K,Bedrooms upstairs), but I guess the configuration can be anything. The common wall between the residences labels the structure a duplex. Similar to a"row-house", except there are only two residences, each with their own entrance. <BR>

A suite is usually a hotel room that consists of one or two bedrooms, with a separate sitting room. An apartment would be self-sustaining, with a kitchen. A duplex (and I am using the American definition) is a free-standing house that consists of TWO separate living quarters, usually mirror images of each other, side by side. You can buy ONE (like a condo, except it's not in a big building, or a long row, it's one house-size building) or buy both and rent one out...oftentimes found here in the U.S. at the seashore (people buy them for summer places). Not sure if the French definition is the same.

Elvira and Kathy: Thank you for your responses, but I must have missed expressing the true spirit of the question. The American definition of duplex, also the dictionary definition, is not of help to me in deciphering the Fodor's French accommodation guides as the term is used to describe some sort of hotel room configuration. Used in the context of the Fodor's guides, which is what I thought we were discussing here, a duplex could be anything from connecting rooms to two double beds in one room. If anyone knows, please respond. Thank you.

it's funny to see how things can be complicate sometime. I don't see none of those definitions as the french one -and I though it was the same in english in an other posting. <BR>To me it is basically an appartement with two floors, which gives a different atmosphere than any kind of single-floor thing. the rest of the configuration doesn't mind. Am I wrong ?

Regarding duplex - have stayed in a couple of places in France where our accommodation was described as a "duplex" - essentially it was a double room with a small sitting area on one level (and the bathroom) and the bedroom was up a short flight of stairs - something less than a suite but more than a room, but on two floors. <BR> <BR>

A duplex is less complicated than a complex, and is easier to rid yourself of. <BR> <BR> <BR>