Our new new place

We still had not found a good apartment and were beginning to get discouraged. We had seen some very nice places but they were not going to be empty for another month or so. After one experience where the owner changed her mind and decided not to move out, I was not going to risk somebody backing out again and us losing a couple of months. Then, on Thursday morning of the week we had pledged we were going to make a decision or *else*, we made a mistake and visited a place with an agent. I called the agent and asked if we had to pay before we saw the place? No, we only pay if we choose it. Oh well, it can't hurt to look, right? The place turned out to be gorgeous, right in the heart of a great downtown neighboorhood. It reminded me of Versailles with very high ceilings, heavy woodwork, parquet floors, and the eerie feeling that all the furniture had been stolen. It was also double the size of our current place and at $1400 a month we'd save $600 each month. The downsides were the agent fee of $1500, the owners lived in Italy, and it needed a little work and a little furnishing. So, despite the fee we basically told the agent we wanted it and would decide for sure by the weekend.



The next day we looked at a place I had earlier scratched because it was 4'th floor/no elevator. However it appeared to be in a great location, so Monica asked that I put it back on the list. So, one final place to look at and we're done. It turned out to be in an even better location than yesterday's place! It was also only $800 a month and no fee. That would leave more money for travelling... The owners spoke English and were really helpful and local. It even had a great (but tiny) layout. Basically, it was perfect except for the stairs. Now we were in the reverse position - we couldn't decide between two great places! We spent the weekend saying "I wish we hadn't seen that one place. Then the choice would be easy."



In the end, we decided on the Versailles place (as you might have guessed from the pictures). Laurent from work helped us drive all our stuff over. My dad and stepmom arrived the next night and they actually saw both places since we spent the last night at the old place (with a sofabed) and then Eloise at work loaned us a mattress for the new place. It was really nice having French-speaking T+T with us since they could help Monica during the day with the apartment boot sequence. Fortunately, the Lyonnaise are very nice and although everything gets messed up, they expect that (perhaps it's an integral part of the massive social employment system and the fact the nobody can ever be fired) and cheerfully fix the mistakes others made. Generally we figure everything takes two tries and one level of escalation on average. But to our surprise, our 3-in-1 internet/TV/phone installation which we dreaded was going to be torture turned out fine on the first try! The good-looking young guy sent over to drill and string cable never stopped bouncing up and down and had the thickest country accent ever. It was like trying to understand a heavy Irish accent. Thea's French is the best so he ended up talking to her the most. She struggled, but she was grinning from ear to ear the whole time - he was just so cute.



It's interesting seeing how these old places keep up. There are fireplaces in every room for heat originally I guess. These have been superceded by "modern" radiators and pipes which run along the baseboards, sometimes looping up to the ceiling to get around a door. Our cable guy ran the wiring outside the walls. Well, I guess for reliability it is better to be either really new and have everything in the walls done right or really old and have everything outside the walls where you can service it. Speaking of wiring. I don't know how many times I have passed this statue before I caught it spewing mist from the horse's nostrils on the hour! The statue looks super old (and it is humongous), but that has to be a modern addition!