Apartment!

We signed a lease this afternoon! Celebrate!

(Click below to read the rest of the post and see pictures! Note: To view a picture in more detail, right-click it and select "Open Link in New Tab.")

Late Saturday night and again on Sunday morning, Andrew and I took the trusty rental car out on long tours through Providence and the surrounding cities, tracking down all the apartments we'd bookmarked as Potential Homes.

 (Trusty rental car!)

We knocked many off the list, due to distance from RISD or proximity to Shady Areas (such as, for instance, when we passed the congregation of young men mentioned in my previous entry), and were still left with a pretty long list of options. When we returned to the hotel Monday afternoon, a little disappointed after our very first tour of an apartment (shady!), and mulling over some advice given by a lovely woman named Deanna (a friend of Ashers' family, with whom they put us in contact--thank you so much for that!), I forlornly looked to Craigslist for apartments significantly closer to campus. We'd been looking south of and east of Providence, but Deanna, who is actually a professor in the Graphic Design department of RISD, strongly recommended we try to get something withing walking distance of campus.

I had little hope of finding anything; we'd scoured the Craigslist ads already. But lo! A new post had been listed two hours earlier, and it sounded lovely. So I called the landlord's number. And then, last night, I also emailed a response to the ad. The ad was posted by the current tenant, and she replied immediately, answering almost all of my questions and highly recommending both the area and the landlord. The landlord, Joan, returned my call this morning, and we viewed the apartment at 12:30.

 (The house!)

She was going to show it to another person at 1:00; at 12:50, we decided to take it. We snagged her just before she showed the place to her next appointment (meaning, the next appointment was standing six yards away, waiting), and told her we'd take it. Good thing, too; that next appointment had her checkbook on her and was ready to pay for it right there. We really got lucky.

The neighborhood is incredibly nice. There are several coffee shops, little cafe/restaurants, clothing boutiques, a CVS, a Bank of America, and even a book store just a few short blocks to the east. RISD is a ten minute walk to the west, on the same street. The houses (which are both residences and, occasionally, businesses; this neighborhood appears to be the dentist capital of Rhode Island, but we've also found real estate agents, attorneys, and a physical therapy group) are all gorgeous.

 (Two buildings to the left [east] of our apartment.)

 (The apartments to the right [west] of ours.)

 (More apartments to the right, and the stone wall that our apartment faces. Walk down that sidewalk for ten minutes and you'll reach RISD!)

 (Random pretty house #1.)

 (Random pretty house #2.)

(Random pretty houses #3-4.)

 (Part of the walk from RISD to our apartment.)

 (The "Governor Henry Lippitt House Museum" that also holds small concerts? String quartets and the like. En route to/from RISD.)

 (Another Andrewface!)

 (Still walking from RISD to our apartment. That's a lovely church on the left.)

 (More residences on the way back to the apartment from RISD.)

We have designated parking behind the building--no fighting for street parking blocks away. We have the third floor of the building to ourselves. It's a small apartment, and we'll have to trade our normal bed for a futon, I think, but for the price and the location, it's an amazing deal. The trees! The nearness of fun things! A Whole Foods within walking distance! A floor to ourselves! The building is tenanted by grad students and couples, not noisy undergrads! The landlord is responsive and very nice! The rent is low! Even though it's small and looks a bit worn around the edges, this is the absolute perfect apartment for us right now.

(Approaching the apartment from the east.)

 (Approaching it from the west. I love that red brick next to it.)

I can't believe how lucky we are. And the timing is perfect, too: the current tenant will vacate around June 10; Andrew starts orientation on June 16. Yay!