Process, or How this is Turning Into A London Blog

The reason why I was in New York for so long was because of a slight hold-up in the Visa process for the UK.  My next home is London.

It's a lovely place.  It's another one of those locales that you just don't move here for the weather, but, eh.  I can deal with my pasty pale destiny. I had traveled to London as a tourist several times in the past- it's a great place to visit and they have amazing museums.  I hadn't seen much outside of the city center, but now, I'm learning.  The great thing about living in Paris was to really get to know it, and see the corners of it that you don't get to see when you pop over for a week here and a long weekend there.  Spending a year, or six months, or a month in a place really opens your eyes to how people live and get on. 

London was decided on after much hemming and hawing.  One of the reasons the Visa was delayed was because we literally decided on it a month beforehand.  We visited in late November and a couple weeks later started the process, and we were legal to go in mid January.  I was totally understanding of any delay or hold up we might encounter as this was fairly last minute.  

We are lucky in this move to have a corporate sponsor, which makes the immigration process much easier.  You just kind of show up with a sheath of paperwork completed and various forms and documents, and the lawyers will hold your hand for the rest and make sure everything goes smoothly.  Still, it was delayed, and we couldn't book our flights until we got our passports back from the embassy, so we ended up spending quite a lot of money on last-minute flights.  

PS, did you know that there's a non red-eye flight Virgin Atlantic flies from Newark!??  We decided to give it a try.  It eats away an entire day, which is terrible for productivity as you take off at 7:50 am and land at 9 pm at Heathrow, and you've watched all of two and a half movies on the 5 hour flight.  The flight was empty, too- whole rows were used for flat napping.  I thought that despite the lost day, I didn't have as bad of jetlag as I normally do from the redeye, but I would inexplicably wake up at 4 am every morning for the first week.

The apartment search was pretty straightforward, but a top priority and with an ASAP move-in date.  Almost no one uses Craiglist here, and early attempts while in the USA to contact people looking to rent out their flats did nothing but generate a lot of Nigerian-style fishing schemes.  We got a hotel and I started filling out enquiries online, of which Zoopla seemed to be the most effective search engine to use.  

Not knowing too much about the surrounding neighborhoods, I bought an Oyster Card and started pounding pavement.  I'd pop out and have a look around at a random tube stop or a neighborhood I had heard about, and then I would walk into the nearest real estate offices next to the tube station.  This was fairly effective, as most agents would be willing to take you out then and there to see some available places, or at least schedule you to come back later that day.  Face-to-face interaction was generally taken more seriously than filling out forms online.

I saw 7-10 places a day in various neighborhoods.  I was told that Islington was "The Brooklyn of London",  and found very little for housing there, and it was priced accordingly.  While it's totally a neighborhood I think I'll go hang out in all the time, I just wasn't willing to spend so much on so little.  I mean, rents here are high- like Manhattan high, even outside the city.  I tried to set a budget higher than I had since people are more than happy to negotiate if they think you will be an easy-going tenant, and offering to pay more months upfront than required also seemed to help.

We settled on a neighborhood that we both liked in South London with a 10 minute tube ride into the city.  We found a lovely place, put an offer on it, and then continued our search since offers can be rejected.  Three harrowing days later, we got word that our offer was accepted, which was great since we had run the real estate companies dry as far as what they could show us in the neighborhood.  I mean, we ended up seeing the same place twice at one point.    

CLEAN YOUR DAMN ROOM.

I saw a lot of places, and got to check out a whole bunch of neighborhoods and streets I normally would not have seen, but I got tired of the game pretty quickly.  I'm happy that the search for a flat lasted one week total.  I saw a few nice places, but a lot of rubbish as well.  People live like animals, and occasionally you  had to look past all the piles and grime and stacks of mess to see the potential or charm of the place.   

A few things about apartment hunting here: they prices quoted are usually the price per week.  Most places come with at least some basic furnishings, and you can usually negotiate with the land lords to get more/better things.  You have to pay something called "council tax", which, depending on your neighborhood, is about 100 GPB per month.  Once you put in an offer, you have to give the agent 1 weeks' rent to let them know you are serious.

How did this compare to apartment hunting in Paris?  The buildings are a bit newer in London, and with the exception of renovated Victorians, they had a bit less character.  The prices are higher.  I don't think we saw anything in Paris that someone was still occupying, but in London, most places still had tenants and all of their junk scattered about.  Every place we saw in London had a washer or washer-dryer wedged in the kitchen, no matter how tiny the kitchen was.  Also, you probably wouldn't ever have a chance to live next door to a gin factory in Paris:

I've been so busy with the search that I haven't had too much time to do much else.  I did find a great yoga studio in Soho, and a few really good places to get a bite.  Our offer on the choice apartment was accepted, but we won't be able to move in for another two weeks (!) so I'm feeling kind of unsettled as living out of a hotel gets old fast.  Still, I'm excited for a new adventure, as always, and I feel fortunate to be in one of the great cities of the world.  

The hunt begins and ends....

Apartment searching has been a fascinating glimpse into Parisian life. My shoes are pretty worn out from all the walking I've been doing.

Lucky for us, Bryan's employers paid for and found us a good realator. This is a luxury that I wouldn't normally splurge for no matter what the circumstances. I mean, really. This is what the Internet is for, right? We did our homework as far as price and what to expect using seLoger and Paris Attitude, which both list furnished apartments.

But I must confess, as much looking we did on our own, they found us the real winners. After an hour in a consultation meeting where we let them know our expectations and our favorite neighborhoods, they compiled a list of back-to-back appointments, mapped out nicely by neighborhood. We spent a day dashing around with real urgency and saw 10 places in one afternoon. I don't think I could have done that on my own.

Paris is a city of old buildings. A couple of the ones we saw were from the 1700's. You really have to check to make sure the landlord is on top of the renovations as we saw only one modern unit in all of our visits. Elevators are a rarity, so you have lots of stair climbing to do. A quirk in the numbering system means that the French start with the ground floor, and then above that is considered the first floor. So a 5th floor walk up is actually on the 6th. Something to keep in mind while hauling groceries.

The high floors do mean you have a nice sunny space. We had specified a need for quiet, so the realtor found us a lot of courtyard facing and garden apartments.

Alas, not all landlords have chic Paresian style. The Ikea and the cobbled together look was not a concern to us at all, but the overly ambitious was.

Yup. That's a record player. With a chinese dragon fan. And thick shag carpet is always a classy touch. I don't care that it's in the Marais, I don't want to be near that thing with my bare feet.

There was one place that was amazing, but the decor was the deal breaker. It was all pillars and gold and glass and chintz. It was like a pied de terre from the movie Goodfellas, or maybe Casino.

The view and the balcony was enormous.

I could have at a sweet 400 sq foot garden, a place to picnic and settle with a bottle of wine. All good things.

(I told Bryan that was a foot bath. The realtor couldn't tell if I was joking or not, but before Bryan had a chance to investigate, he said, "no no no, it's to wash your bottom.")

I just wouldn't feel comfortable in a place like that. Like my great-aunt might walk in and catch me making out with a guy on the suede couch and then I'd be in real trouble.

Still.

Sigh.

We saw a great fancy place with lots of ornate molding and 3 marble fireplaces, but they were doing huge amounts of construction out in the courtyard, as they were installing a lift. It was hard to look past dust and noise and burly men hanging outside the window.

There was an adorable carriage house that was perfectly acceptable.

But the neighborhood was dullsville, with lots of magistrate and official buildings with police stationed out front.

Very few places we saw (even though it was requested as a must-have feature) had full kitchens. Most had a tiny fridge (like for the dorm room beers to keep medium-cold) and a microwave, and several had a clothes washing machine in place of where I wanted an oven to be. When I asked the realtor about this lack of features, she would think about it for a second and say, "Ah. There's a very good place to get roast chickens just down the street." So, I guess like New Yorkers in Manhattan, they have the Chinese place and the Mexican place and the Pizza place on speed dial and then they go out for the rest of the week. Still. I had to explain in a few different languages that I liked to cook and I'd really love to have an oven. "Probably not possible, but microwaves can make your food taste good".

Sigh.

There was also some contention about a little place in Montmartre. I love parts of that neighborhood and I was willing to look around in it for a quiet street.

Montmartre is a steep and winding walk up to the top, and some of the pedestrian streets are staircases. This building was right ON the staircase lead up to the church.

The bedroom window faced the courtyard.

The livingroom window faced the stairs, and the funicular train that brings tourist to the top zipped by every couple of minutes. If you crained your neck around, you could see Sacre Coeur in all it's bleached white glory, very close to your window. It was a little alarming how lovely and how close it was.

But the apartment was done up very tastefully and freshly painted with beautiful pieces of asian furniture. It was just so cozy, I forgot it didn't have an oven or a stove top at all. Microwave Cooking and ME! would be the title of my first published cookbook. Yeah, I'm ok with that.

That would get to be my street. A stair street!

And I could lord above everyone else on all their boring streets that cars go down.

It will be like Amelie and I skip around all day, solving mysteries and secretly helping people and maybe meeting my soul mate in the process or uhhh.

Reality check. This neighborhood is one of the most touristed on earth. I will have to put black-out blinds on my windows to keep people from watching me watch TV and write my microwave cookery book from the stairs all day. Chances are, by the end of my reign here, I will have installed sharp blades onto my shoes to kick tourist out of my way. Did I mention that I can't stand it when people stop suddenly in front of me? Yes, we all hate that. Sure, I'm fine the first 3 or 4 times a day it happens, but after that, I get really angry. Going to a tourist site and have this happen wouldn't really bother me, but dealing with this happening over and over again every day would make me insane, especially if I wouldn't be able to bake cookies to make myself feel better.

So there. I said no to my sort of dream apartment. It would have turned me into a monster.

I blame Jesus to some extent. Nice church, Jesus. Enjoy all the tourst. You can have them.

In the end, we decided to go for the place that I actually liked the most and trusted my gut on. It's in a good, quiet neighborhood with lots of markets and shops but no major attraction to draw busloads of people in. It has a full proper kitchen, with a real stove and a real oven. Cookies can be made. Life is good. The wheels are in motion.

Wish us luck.