House Hunting Part I

We started out the day pretty lazy--Robbie, Michael, and I went down to eat the hotel's breakfast buffet.  The standard breakfast here consists of pastries and coffee/espresso.  There was a huge assortment of different kinds of pastries plus cereal, yogurt, some meats and cheeses, fruit, juice, and a coffee machine that made various different types of coffees.  We went back to the hotel and hung out for a while, then Michael was ready to take his first nap (and so was I). By the time we woke up, we didn't really have enough time to go explore before we were getting picked up to look for houses, so we just stayed in the room.

We looked at four houses today and were pleasantly surprised by what we saw.  When we were looking online before we came, all the houses and apartments looked really tiny and cramped.  We saw some pretty huge, spacious places.  The first house was our favorite--it was three stories plus a basement.  The first floor had a living room type area with a weird spiral staircase that led up to one of the bedrooms.  The kitchen, dining room, and a bathroom were also downstairs and opened into a little yard, which is apparently very hard to come by "inside the wall" where we were looking.  The second floor had the bedrooms and bathroom.  The staircase was carpeted, but according to the landlord, it was made of gorgeous white marble so if we pick that one, we'll request that they remove the carpet.  There's some funky tile in the bathroom and one of the bedrooms, but that just adds to the charm.  The third floor is just a room with skylights that could be used as an office. Any of the furniture or pictures or whatever that are in the house we can use.  If we want them to take stuff out, they'll do that too.  There are AC units in the upstairs bedrooms, but we'll probably negotiate for one downstairs as well.  Here are some pictures:


Master Bedroom

The yard

 

Front room with the spiral staircase

Attic room

Smaller bedroom

The second house was just huge.  The house itself was three stories with all kinds of bedrooms and bathrooms, a terrace, a bigger kitchen, a yard, and a guest house.  While it was a gorgeous house as well, it was just too big. There's no way we could use that much space.  The third was a bright, airy apartment on the third floor of a building about a block away from the castle.  It was nice, and is still in the running, but the kitchen needed some work (it didn't have an oven), and had one less bedroom than we were hoping for. The last apartment was two stories, had a tiny garden/yard but the layout was a little weird (the downstairs bathroom was at the end of the kitchen) and the rooms were smaller than we'd like.

We still have more houses to look at Wednesday and Friday.  We're hopeful the first one will work out if we still like it after we see the rest and nobody swoops in and gets it first!  Michael stayed with our sponsor's daughter while we went and did very well.  Apparently after they played for a couple of hours he crawled over to his car seat, climbed in, and put himself to sleep until we got home.  When he woke up, I was eating a peach and he crawled in my lap and pretty much ate the whole thing for me:

The little peach thief

 



We went out again to dinner at a little seafood place downstairs from the hotel. It was a little different than the more traditional Italian food we've eaten so far, so it wasn't as big of a hit as the past two nights.  I also met one of Robbie's soon to be coworkers who is staying in our same hotel as I was walking up the stairs, so she came in and talked to us a little bit and gave us some ideas about places to visit and things to do. 

Tomorrow we're heading up to Vicenza to do some inprocessing stuff and that should take most of the day.