Monday, November 10, 2008

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.










4 comments:

Dirkey said...

ha ha yeah its amazing how the rest of the world lives. So much less space than we have!
Yeah for apartment!!!!
Dinner soon? Lets make this keeping in touch thing be on a regular basis :)

Unknown said...

if you're looking for an accommodation in Rome I suggest you visit vacation rentals in rome where you will easily find hotel rooms and apartments for any budget, and with free internet connections...ciao

Renee said...

I don't know who this Claire chickie is~ I was hoping this blog was just for my friends and family to enjoy, but FYI I paid wayyyyyy less than any of the places listed on the web site she suggested. So either she is a Realtor or a Rockefeller cause those places were ridiculously expensive.

dweaver said...

Hey! It's Deb Weaver! =)

I finally found you and figured out how to do this!

( hallelujah chorus )

I'm trying to get in touch with you and since my system had a bug, I had to shut down, wipe and reformat, and I lost your new ph#.

Call me! or write

Love ya! I hope you get this before you leave!!
Deb