Hi
Before I start, i think today is the shortest day of the year in Britian. We shall see. At the end of my thrid blog, I talked about the unit which Tan and I visited. Unfortunately it wasn't to be. We were thinking of calling the landlord that night to let him to that we wanted the flat but thought that it could wait till the morning coz we thought that the englishmen slept early as the sun sets at about 4pm these days. I know Australian sleeps early and sun sets at about 6:30-7 there.
I called him in the morning and he said that it was gone. Another person had called the night before. Oh well. We were really dissapointed. I think Tan and I had thought/plans of what we were going to do with the place and was quite sure we were going to live there.
I think it would be another week before we view our current flat. In the mean time it is back to buying the local paper and looking at the accomodation pages everyday. There isn't much. I think there are more shared accomodation which we didn't really want coz we enjoy the privacy and also that we can have guests over without any hassle.
We saw one. it is a 2 year old apartment on the edge of the city. It was £700 but it included the council tax and water bills. all we had to pay was electircity and the rent. The apartment is fully furnished, sort of like a serviced apartment because the owners only lives there during the summer months and during winter, he lives in Spain or somewhere else warmer.
We thought that it would be great living as we wouldn't have to buy anything. it is not easy buying stuff when you don't have a car. We take our cars for granted, those of us who have cars. Living here, we are back to being students sort of. having to catch public transport everywhere we go. We had to catch two buses to IKEA and we still haven't bought our ironing board yet. We can't just buy what we want, we have to think about how we are going to transport it back. It is fun in a way. Also, the only chinese shop we know of is about 15 mins walk from our current place so we walk there to buy our chinese grocery which is quite expensive if you compare it to Australia and the stuff are quite limited. I think everytime we go to London, we will buy some chinese grocery in London.
Anyway back to flat hunting. The newish flat in the city was certainly tempting, the only catch is that it could only be on a 6 month lease as the owner will want to live in there from July onwards. you have to understand that at that stage we were quite desperate to have our own place and the dissapointment of missing out on the last property added to the desperation. This flat was managed by an agent. i am not sure if i said this before but with agent you have to pay an agent fees about 25% of the rent and also have to pay various fees so we were desperate yet we didn't really want to deal with an agent.
On the day we were suppose to view the flat, the agent called to say that they didn't have the keys and it is with a contractor doing work on the flat and so had to cancel. I think it was God interviening coz if we had seen the flat we would have say yes to it/ to anything.
So a few days went day and a few newspaper later i saw an ads for a place in Redland, where we currently live. it is close to Whiteladies Road, which is the hippest road in Bristol, apparently it contains alot of nice restaurent which i don't think we will sample. Also there are plenty of transport on Whiteladies Road. The areas we were looking at were Redland, Cotham and Clifton with Clifton being one of the most expensive area of Bristol, I read somewhere that Clifton is sort of like the Chelsea of London.
We have only looked at the areas north of Bristol. We have never been to the south. People here generally dislike the South. I am not sure why but I am sure that it is much cheaper to live in the South. One day we will go around there and see for ourself. Redland is in the north obviously, along with clifton and cotham. Clifton is on the north west with Whiteladies Road separating Clifton and Redland and to the south of redland is cotham. Basically to the right of Clifton, across whiteladies Road is Cotham and Redland. I think the bristol city council has some nice maps of Bristol if you are interested to see where we live.
So, i called this guy and we view the flat that afternoon and saids yes straight away. Our current flat is about 50 metres to the other flat we missed. Our flat was built in 1875. I think it is a Victorian style flat. It has a bathroom, room, kitchen and a living room. The building has two flats, one on first floor and ours is on the Hall floor. The people upstairs seems to be nice. Three girls live there and we haven't really talked to them yet. Thinking of getting some chocolate for them for Christmas.
The living room is larger than the other flat. Our bedroom is large and the kitchen is brand new. it has gas hob which we like alot. and heaps of cupboard. we have a new bosch fridge with ample freezer place. Also in the kitchen we have a table which can sit 2 to 4 people. This is very handy as we eat there most of the time. Our bedroom has about 3 wardrobe, a bed, a tall boy and a make up table? those table with a big mirror and lots of drawers. We were quite impressed with the furnishing of the place.
Our living room has a 6 sitter dinning table. a double couch, 2x single couch, an ottoman, 3 coffee table and a large cupboard.
The toilet is like a standard toilet with a shower head in the bath. The only thing about this place is the weird layout which we have gotten used to. Our place is U-shaped. As you open the door, the toilet is on the right, futher down, the living room is the next room on the right. On the left is a wall and beyond the wall is the stairs which leads upstair. Futher along the hall, you go down a few stairs making a complete U turn, the door on the right leads to the kitchen. The kitches has a big window which looks into the garden. The garden is a low maintenance garden with pebbles instead of grass. there is a outdoor in the middle of the garden. Once into the kitchen, there is a few stairs and a door on the left which leads to the bedroom.
As i said, this place has a strage layout. Our rent is £600 per month which is very reasonable for our area. I really like the high celling. The whole place has central heating. The heating is via hot water supplied by the boiler in the kitchen.
On the bottom is a cellar, accessible from the outside, are two washing machine, one for each flat. This flat didn't come with a washing machine but the last tenant left it there as she didn't need it anymore and it works fine :) . There is also a storage room to store bicycle, boxes and stuff. The garden is only accessible from the cellar.
So that is our place, it is nice and we spent alot of our time in the living room. In australian the trend is to open plan and over here there are doors for every room and we are used to closing and opening door to keep the heat in.
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