Apartment Hunting Blog - Les Chalets (the one we picked)

After the various issues and things, we somewhat decided to go with "easy". As I noted, we first were looking at unfurnished apartments, and then decided that most of the furnished ones had good furniture, and maybe that was better (easier) than buying furniture and having it delivered and then having to get it over to another apartment in a year or so (or if we don't like Toulouse, to another city in France). Several companies and/or owners seemed to be willing to rent to us (although one told us we would have to rent starting a month before we wanted to). The guy who we had worked with to get this temporary apartment had mentioned that he had other, larger apartments, that may work for us. Mind you, we knew that this would mean it would be more expensive, since he has a commission on top of the rent that goes to the landlord. However, it also means we don't have to worry too much about whether or not a landlord/agency will rent to us, nor have to deal with any bureaucracy around getting utilities hooked up, since these are fully furnished (including dishes and linens) and include all utilities. So he showed us this apartment, which he was able to negotiate a slightly lower price with the owner since we were taking it for a full year. It may be a bit bigger than what we really needed, but it had almost everything we were looking for.

So here it is ... note that most of these pictures are the ones from the management company's website, since when we went to see it, the current tenant was still living there and so some of the pictures have his stuff in it. The pictures really do match the apartment exactly (which is really odd since hotel rooms almost never look like what the website picture is).

Where is it? Here is a map of the city with the apartment location marked. It is on the north side of the "Centre Ville", but very close to public transportation and only a 10 minute walk or so to Capitole, which is thought of as the middle of the city. One of the issues with really being in Centre Ville is that many of the streets around Capitole are pedestrian (pedestrian priority so while some cars do drive on them, it is very difficult and in some cases, you have to have a code/card to get the road blocks dropped so that you can drive). They are also almost all 1-way and not always in an easy way. For example, in some cases, to get from the public parking in Capitole to an apartment 3 blocks away, you drive over to St Cyprien (the other side of the river). So this apartment ends up being close enough to Centre Ville that it is easy/quick to get almost anywhere, but doesn't have the terrible parking/driving situations as some of the other apartments would have had. It is about a 5 minute walk to our gym, and about 10-12 minutes walk to Marche Cristal and Marche Victor Hugo.

From the street, this is the view of the address, although this building is *not* the one that we will live in. You can see the blue door, which we will walk/drive through to get into the courtyard.

Once you are in the courtyard, there are another couple buildings that around around it, and we will be in the building on the left side (the parking, which is the last picture, is on the right). You can see the first 2 big rounded windows on the left ... those 2 are our apartment. So under the left-one is a big blue door, which we (at this point) have no idea what it is, but it isn't part of our apartment (it may be storage for the owner, we don't really know, nor did we ask). The entry door is under the middle window (which is our window in the living room). The small window in the middle is the staircase that goes from the ground floor directly into our apartment, which is a "duplex" on the 1st floor (second American floor) and top floor.

As you come up the stairs, the living room is on the right, and the kitchen/dining room is on the left. At the very top of the stairs is a powder room (1/2 bath). Here you can see the living room from a few different angles. It has a sofa along with a couple chairs and a small desk in the corner. It has a fairly small TV, so I suspect we'll go ahead and buy a larger TV to use. While it doesn't have a balcony, both of the big windows open up and they get plenty of sunshine. They also have shades that can be raised/lowered as we want to block the sun. One negative to this apartment is that it doesn't have air conditioning. There are several fans in the apartment, and if we need, we can purchase a small moveable AC unit that we could put in whatever room we are in.

The kitchen is a U-shape with a dishwasher, oven, microwave, and gas stovetop with 4 burners. It has quite a bit of cabinet space and the counters are a reddish granite. You can also see the very Toulousian-style brick-and-stone wall that goes along the kitchen and dining room area. The dining room is quite large: big enough for a rectangular table with 6 chairs. You may be asking where the refrigerator is ... in the 3rd picture, if you look closely, you can see a door on the back-right .. that is a large closet where a refrigerator is, along with storage for cleaning things. Mind you, it isn't an "American-sized" refrigerator, but it is fairly good sized for Europe.

Both of the bedrooms, each with an ensuite bathroom, are on the top floor. You'll notice that they have slanted roofs and each has a skylight (which also has an electronic shutter that can close to block light). The doors that you see are closets, which are short since they are on the short wall where the slanted roof comes down. But there is LOTS of closet space really, so we don't anticipate problems. The master bedroom has the double bed, while the guest room has 2 twins (which we will actually put together with straps that we can pick up at the local housewares store). Each has their own bathroom with sink/toilet/shower. No bathtub, so any guests that are looking to relax in a big tub will be disappointed. The guest bathroom actually has the laundry area also, so behind the lit mirror behind the sink in the last picture, you can see a little laundry basket and behind that wall is a small washing machine and a dryer.

And finally, it has an open, but covered, parking space. Since it is already in a secure courtyard (you have to have the code or key to get into the courtyard to start with), we aren't worried about not having a door.

So, there it is! Our stuff from the US is currently in Rotterdam, clearing EU customs. I'll do another blog with the new apartment once we get moved in with our stuff and it seems more like "our" place instead of someone else's place.