Excellent suggestion.

We're going on a family trip this Fall, and we wound up renting an apartment/villa (Riviera), sleeps 6-8, and a short walk to the beach, and it was 600 euros/week.

In the process, I did a lot of looking around in both Paris and London, and there are many apartments available at fairly reasonable rates. With the state of the economy in Europe, they're usually glad to have someone renting the place out.

Of course, April is pretty close and availability might be spotty, but it's certainly worth a look-see. A couple of hours with the Google might be very enlightening.

And it it doesn't work out this year, well, there's always next year.