More House Hunting

 We set out with three days to look for housing before Tom started his new job.  Our first choice originally was A) to have a "living in the city" experience B) be close enough that he could either walk or cycle to work C) be within walking distance to Metro so whatever I end up doing I can do without having to drive everyday D) be in an area where we would feel safe walking through our neighborhood  and E) someplace we could afford, coming to know that would mean an entirely different cost of living than what we've been used to.

Well, so far, we had not had luck finding places that fit into those requirements.  If we could afford it, it wasn't a good neighborhood; if we loved the area and it was close to everything....it was WAY out of our price range.  We hadn't counted on having to pay extra for parking just about anyplace we lived....ranging from $35 to $300 a month.  So, the search continued.

 We also wanted to stay in the DC area but as you can see from this map, that can mean a lot of things.  You can easily start in MD (where Andrews AFB is) and drive through the district and into Virginia and back several times a day.  That, and the district is divided into 4 quadrants.  So when you look at an address, you have to pay attention whether it's in the NW, NE, SW or SE.  Now, in Utah I was so familiar with the area that I would know the logical way to set up looking at houses for real estate clients, where as here....I don't have a clue.  So we could easily spend HOURS crossing back and forth across all these areas.  And though, say Georgetown is a couple of miles from us....that 2 miles can take a very long time to drive as we go through the city.  Our GPS timing became only an estimate. Very tiring and drove us both into grumpiness.

After a very frustrating Friday, we decided to make Saturday more relaxing.  We went to the Eastern Market and parked in a neighborhood we liked then walked around.  The market has food, flowers, then outside vendors with art and more food.  We also ran into Tom's cousin while we were there!

 A little further down the street is Barracks Row (it's near the Marine Barracks) which is lined with restaurants, shops, the Shakespeare Studios, a church that was recommended to us and other great places.  We had lunch there at The Chesapeake Room, a nautical themed, dark wood throughout...very comfortable place.  We sat in the front bay window where we could look out over the sidewalk.  I had a crab stack...fried green tomato, crab salad, avocado, cucumber and avocado vinaigrette.  Um, yummy!

 We looked at a lot of row houses....(the one with the red curtains out front) that had some possibilities but was in a kind of dicey neighborhood and not much curb appeal.

We looked online, I had a realtor sending us stuff, I searched militarybyowner.com, I carried my Apartment Showcase book with me diligently, craigslist and called a realtor in the area who specialized in rentals and showed us a few things.

By complete accident, while looking for another address we happened upon this place that had workers inside and a rental sign out front.  We called and the landlord said we could go inside.

 Yes, the workers were putting a fresh coat of PINK paint in the living room.  Upstairs rooms were yellow, and light blue.  Still, we liked the place...it had free parking in the back and three bedrooms.  It was a couple of Metro stops from the Chinatown area so we went down there to see if it felt like a place we could walk around safely.

 We had breakfast there and really liked the area, they had a Rita's which would fulfill our Italian Ice cravings and we knew we could repaint it.  Only downside was Tom would have to bike further to work AND through the city.  Still, we were very interested.  However, he/she stopped returning my calls.  Finally sent me a text saying they had gone to Jamaica (there was an accent, we just couldn't place it and this explained the love of bright colors) for an emergency funeral.  Well, long story short we never heard from them again and the next time we drove by the rental sign was down.  However, this type of thing happened a couple of times so we finally decided that if we found something that felt right we needed to jump on it!

 We also looked at high rises... tons of them...this is where parking got expensive and they had a lot of cool amenities that would be great to have...however we would also be paying extra for them.

How often would we really use the upper patio?

 Or go into the game room to watch one tv with people we didn't know from the building?

 Yeah, the party room was cool, but you had to pay extra to rent it for a private party and how often would we do that with no family around?  They had outside pools that were only open Memorial to Labor day and at really weird hours.  Tom wouldn't be able to swim in the early AM.  The hunt had to continue............