The Apartment

We've been in New Haven for 4 days now. No one has asked, but I'm sure people would like to know about the apartment, so I've taken some pictures. The apartments has 2 bedrooms and 1 bath and is arranged in a "townhouse" style with the bedrooms and bathroom upstairs and the kitchen and living room downstairs. Here's a floor plan:

For reference, north is diagonally down and to the right.

The rectangle at the bottom left of the kitchen in the floor plan is a breakfast bar, and "downstairs" is actually on the second floor of the building. On the top floor, the bedroom on the left is the one we'll be using as our bedroom and the other will be the study area/computer room.

Now for some pictures taken of the apartment itself. These pictures were taken on the day we arrived in the apartment and the pathetically small pile of belongings you see on the living room floor is everything we have until the truck arrives (possibly tomorrow).

Downstairs:

The view looking in the front door.
The door at left leads to the terrace, while
the counter in the foreground is the breakfast bar.

The kitchen is rather long and narrow.

Part of the living/dining room area.
Especially sharp-eyed readers will note that the
cats are in the cage in the far corner: this is because
when we moved in it was extremely hot in the apartment,
but there were no screens in the window. We called management
and they installed the screens about half an hour after this picture was taken.

The cage remains in the apartment as a "safe haven" for the cats.
They go in there less each day.

A bit more of the living/dining room.

The view back from where the cats' cage was in the above pictures.
Note the sad pile of belongings. ;-)

Upstairs:

It's extremely difficult to take useful pictures of bedrooms and bathrooms, but here's what I have.

Our bedroom as seen from the doorway.

Our bedroom looking back towards the door from the window. (Like I said, it's really hard to get useful pictures of empty rooms like this.)

The study/computer room.
The window faces roughly northeast.

The bathroom. The cupboard door is open
because we had the cats locked in here while we
unloaded the car and Gizmo hid in the cupboard.
It took a few seconds to find him when Rachel went
in to visit the cats at one point.

The view from the terrace:

We have a corner apartment with a view of two rather busy one way streets; George and Howe.

Looking to the left as you step out onto the terrace, you see
George St., which runs northwest-to-southeast.

The intersection of George and Howe is basically due east.
Note the lovely view of the dumpster at the bottom of the picture.
The white thing in the bushes is a seat cushion. It looks like somebody
tried to hit the dumpster from their terrace and missed by a lot.

Howe St. is straight out the back of the apartment.

Looking pretty much due south. Howe St.
is to the left. Below is the driveway used by
those residents lucky enough to have a garage
for their car. (We're on a waiting list; right now
we have to park on George St.)

Unfortunately, Howe and George are both pretty busy roads and the intersection is controlled by a traffic light. That wouldn't bother us, but it's late in the season to buy air conditioners so we're having trouble finding any so we have our windows open 24 hours a day right now. In addition, there are two hospitals within a few blocks, so a lot of ambulances go by with sirens wailing.

This isn't exactly heaven, but we'll only be here for a short while (possibly 2 years) so we'll make do. Once it gets cold, the windows will be closed and they actually block the sound pretty well. If we don't find an air conditioner this summer, we will definitely get one or two as soon as they hit the market next spring so we don't have to listen to the traffic all summer again.

A couple of cat pictures to finish up:

Gizmo quickly established "his" spot on the stairs.

This picture shows where Gizmo likes to lie.
He's the dark spot up at the corner.

A closeup. Gizmo's spending less time there as he adjusts
to the new place, but it's actually a good out-of-the-way
place for him where he can see both upstairs and down, so
he returns to that spot any time he gets spooked.

Phoenix, on the other hand, seems to think that he's a computer. He certainly fits in the bag really well.

Looks like we could just zip him in and go for a trip.