So. Apartment hunting. Let me just say right off that I am enjoying very much living with Chris and Natasha, and I am not looking for a place of my own because they are pitching me out, or I’m tired of them, or their lovely house or anything like that. I’m looking for a place because I really enjoyed Doing the Urban Thang in Philadelphia, and I love Wellington, and want to get to know it better before we get our Place in the Country, which I will also love. Plus, getting up at 5 in the morning sucks Monkey Pox.
So having missed a couple of promising-sounding places last week due to sleeping in like a lazy slob (the To Let listings are in the Wednesday and Saturday editions of the Dominion Post), I resolved this weekend (flu or no flu — fortunately for me, I am mostly in the no-flu end of things by now) to Get An Early Start. Because, you know, early birds and worms and stuff.
Little did I realize that an Early Start would mean hauling my cookies out of bed at 4:20AM, because Chris would let me have the car if I hauled *his* cookies out to Miramar for his Big Day (first of many, with any luck) as an extra doing pick-up shooting for Return of the King. While I am recovering from the lastest of many fits of irrational jealousy, feel free to pop over to *his* blog for the (alas) NDA-constrained account of it.
On the way back up the Hutt for another hour-and-a-half of sleep, I picked up a paper. Around 8, armed with Heather’s “aim for 1/3 your income or lower” advice and my pretty specific set of criteria (parking, white-ware — meaning, fridge, washing machine, etc. — walk to work, and cats), I started making calls, setting up appointments, and then finally driving around to see places. As it happens, I said “Yes, please” to the very first place I called and saw, but then I went to look at a bunch of other places anyway, just to confirm for myself that I’d done the right thing (I *did* look at some places last week, so I didn’t just leap in all uneducated and stuff, still, I was in town, it was a nice day, and I was largely plague-free for the first time in a week, so I felt some wandering around was in order).
Since I see I’ve been sparing you the usual deluge of photos in recent days, here are some of the places I looked at (Thanks, BTW, to Lynne and Chris for fixing it so it doesn’t put you back at the top of the page when you click on one of the pics !):
The last little brick house wasn’t one of the places I looked at — it was across the street from the tall apt building — I just wanted to include it to show that in between all of these more-or-less affordable blocks of flats are often some really sweet little houses. That tall apartment building, BTW, had a sign in the lobby that cautioned you to keep your windows closed during the high winds, as they’d already had someone get their glass sucked out.
This one below was too expensive for me, and off a not especially attractive alley, as you can see, but I wanted to include it to show some of the colors Kiwis are liable to paint their interiors. The downstairs (with more of those gorgeous polished wood floors) was a more subdued creamy yellow; the other, larger bedroom was a green not unlike our old living room.
Finally, I’d come away from our vacation here with the mental image of Napier as the big Art Deco town (most of it was flattened by an earthquake in time to be rebuilt all Deco, then it fell into an economic slump long enough to ensure all the lovely Deco buildings weren’t torn down once Deco was out of style), but Wellington has quite a lot of it around as well.
The tall yellow building to the left of that first shot is the building the apartment I’m hoping to get (we sign papers Wednesday — cross your fingers) is in. The second pic is of Embassy Theater, which they are renovating in order to hold the World Premier of RotK there (Chris tells me they have good jazz upstairs). The Strawberry Fare is a cafe a little further up the same street; and the Oasis is a club of some sort on one of the streets off Courtenay Place, about a block away. Scrummy Deco goodness. I’ll blather more about my apartment when I’m sure I’ve got it. I think a verbal agreement may be binding here, but I was burned by a broken verbal when we were moving up to Boston, so I’m not counting any un-popped weasels. If you’ve got spare housing juju, fling it my way (and Judith’s, too).
Oh, and I promised I’d get a picture of the Hutt River. Hard to believe that you’re looking at one of the most densely settled parts of NZ, eh ?
And Happy Solstice ! It’s midwinter here, it’s in the 50s, and the roses are still blooming. Whee !
