Dreams of my Roman apartment (in Italia)

An arm & a leg will get you a nice place to stay = )

OK, well I finally took the plunge, said a prayer (you better pray for me too), and put a hefty and scary deposit down on an apartment in Rome. I've been searching almost every day for a few hours a day for over a month now and just wasn't coming up with anything affordable that was much bigger than a bread box. Most Italian apartments consist of a single room about 10'x12'which has your bed, a kitchenette and your bathroom all in the same room! For those of you who know me well (or you will if you don't after reading all my blogs) you know I'm pretty claustrophobic and a 10x12 room just wasn't gonna cut it, nor was sharing a 2 bedroom apartment with 3 other girls.



So found this apartment call Jessy's Rooms, which actually had 14 positive reviews online and the only negative was from one person who said the shower was a bit slow but they still liked it. The price was great, until I asked the landlord to fill out the special contract so I can get my "Permit to Stay" in Rome. This didn't go over that well, because most landlords rent under the table and don't want to register there contracts because then they have to pay taxes. So the landlord wasn't too keen on this but finally agreed, but the contract is costing me an extra 900 euro which sucks but now makes it pretty much equal in price with the other nicer apartments (bigger than a bread box) I saw.

My apartment is about 500 sqft (I can deal with that size), 1 mile or 20 a minute walk to school which isn't bad and everything is included in the price (I specifically asked in like 10 emails over and over again are there any more expenses or costs). A lot of places, charge extra for heat, electric, phone, internet and so I'm feeling pretty good about this.

I'll show ya some pictures of the place and you might think ewh, but trust me when I tell you this is very nice in comparison to most of what I was looking at. I've definitely seen nicer but I couldn't afford the beautiful places that look like our every day regular homes here in America for 4 months a place like that would cost me almost 12-20thousand dollars. So appreciate your home, cause if we all lived in Italy we'd be living in a box.

Italy verses the rest of the world...

This video was shown to me by both my Italian 1 and 2 teachers, who are from Italy and swear this is exactly how it is in Italy, verses the rest of the world. YEah can't wait for the insanity to begin, LOL!!!!!!

Enjoy!
Ciao!

bummer, beware of craigslist scammers

OK, so as many of you know I am moving to Rome to study art history with Temple University. I'm am so freaking excited I can barely stand myself. I am THE art history museum geek and proud of it! Rome is just the place for me to experience in person some of the greatest masters of art.

So I'm now trying to get myself ready and prepared for this major trip and the one thing I have to do is find somewhere to live.

This by the way has not been so easy, Italy is very very (very) expensive, so on the advise of the school counselor at Temple I've been searching Craig'slist.org. which she noted other people have used to find apartments in the past. I have been searching other sites for long term rental in Rome but like I said it is insanely expensive. So at first I was thrilled to see how cheap some of the apartments were on Craigslist.

So here are my findings. In short, refer to the old saying if it seems to good to be true it probably is. I really wanted to believe the people who wrote me back about their cheap apartments for rent and that the money wasn't as important as finding someone reliable and clean to care for their homes. I truly almost fell for this, but they are all scams.
Sighhhhh. I'm so sad now as I was so excited and was feeling so smart that I was going to save a bunch of money on these cheap places and have my own beautiful apartment in Rome.

Renting sight unseen is so darn hard and scary, but I have no choice and will probably have to pay a lot more than I want to and go with reputable well know possibly touristy place, unless I can find someone who knows someone who lives in Rome and is willing to find me a place. Anyone have any close friends or family in Rome, who will help me find an apartment??

I'm goin to Rome!!!! woooowhooo!

Hi all!! This is my very first blog, courtesy of my good buddy Dirkey who just set me up here.