When Will accepted the position in New Orleans last month, I was thrilled to be moving to New Orleans... but I hadn't been in about 10 years. Meaning, since high school. And before Katrina. So while I knew I'd enjoy living in the city, I was anxious to see how it had changed.
Seeing as we needed to find a place to live (stat), we took a 4-day trip down to the Big Easy a couple of weeks ago. We explored most of the neighborhoods, did a lot of walking and lots of eating, and checked out several of the parks in the area. I - am - in - love! There's just no end of things to do there. In addition to having a huge number of restaurants and bars (these people seriously love to eat, drink, and socialize), some sort of festival seems to be occurring nearly every weekend. To my surprise, the parks are incredible as well. There's golf, football/baseball/soccer/rugby fields, kayaking, and canoeing just a few miles from the city center. It just so happens that dogs are welcome on kayaks & canoes :) And the city park has the craaaaziest oak trees. Okay, I'm done blubbering!
Speaking of restaurants and bars, did I mention Will's obsession with raw oysters? I'd never been willing to try them, but he ate them so many times in the 4-day trip, I eventually broke down. Not bad, not bad.
The Blind Pelican (best name ever) has 25 cent oysters every day from 4-7PM. In other words, it may be our second home after the move.
I've
promoted Airbnb before, and as is standard, we rented a place for this trip, too. We actually rented just a bedroom in a shotgun apartment. Our hostess was an artist, and invited us to her "art battle" that weekend. In 90 minutes, she and the 4 other artists could create whatever they wanted (using paint markers) on a big white canvas. At the end, an applause meter was used to determine the winner. It was definitely an experience we wouldn't have come across without using Airbnb!
She won, by the way :)
So now to the real reason for the trip... the house hunt. The housing market (renting and buying) is nutso down there. There's such a huge number of people moving into the city these days, the demand far outweighs the supply. So we had to bring our A game. Even though we plan to rent for at least a couple of years, we wanted to work with a realtor for the rental-search process. Since we had a limited amount of time to find something we (hopefully) loved, we wanted a professional involved.
We had a few must haves:
- Pets accepted. Obviously.
- A duplex, single-family home, or townhouse. We didn't want to be in a giant complex or apartment building.
- At least 1 bedroom + a bonus room for office space.
- Outdoor space. We can't live without it. Really.
- Hard floors. We loathe carpeting. It's just so hard to keep clean. Especially with stinky pugs.
- In the city. There are lots of places available in the 'burbs, but we want to be in the action.
- Laundry on site. Maybe we're spoiled from owning our home the past few years, but this is a must.
- At least 800 sq ft. Living in a smaller space with 2 pugs would likely send me into madness.
In addition, there were several would-like-to haves:
- A fenced in area... preferably with a grassy section for the pugs to do their business.
- 1.5+ baths. It's sooo nice to have an extra toilet.
- Close to Will's work. After commuting an hour to and from work every day, he was dying to have a short drive (although pretty much everything in NOLA is within a 25 min drive). I was really hoping he could walk/bike to work, actually.
- Some sort of storage. We're dumping a ton of stuff that we don't need before moving, but you know my Christmas obsession :) We hoped for a place to store our bikes and Christmas tubs.
- A great neighborhood. There were a couple particular areas we loved. We were willing to be outside them, but kept our fingers crossed for the perfect locale.
- No more than 1500 sq ft. I've been cleaning a 3800 sq ft house for the past year. I would loooove a place that didn't require as much of that :)
We spent a full day searching for places with our realtor. We saw some pretty interesting apartments in a variety of price ranges, neighborhoods, and styles. A few were a definite "no" right off the bat. One had an amazing location, but was all carpeting, one was a basement apartment (I'm short, yes, but I still can't handle the 7' ceilings), one was across from a relatively rowdy bar, one was in a super college-oriented neighborhood with no parking to be found, one had a washer dryer in the basement, but it was shared with other tenants next door (could be fine, could be disastrous). You get the point. There were a lot of great choices, but each one seemed to have at least one big draw-back.
Then, there was this one. An 1100 sq ft shot gun Victorian double with 2 beds and 1.5 baths, hardwood floors, a fenced in front and back patio, an outdoor shed in the back, washer/dryer, and 13 ft ceilings. Oh, and it's a block off of Frenchman (the music scene in NOLA) in the Marigny- a tiny little neighborhood with a community feel right behind the French Quarter. Aaaand an 8 min bike ride to Will's work. O... M... G. I almost peed my pants when we found it. I couldn't contain myself. It was p-e-r-f-e-c-t.
Turns out several other people found it to be perfect as well. It had been listed for 1 day, and there were 2 other applicants when we saw it. I immediately entered defense mode. We're talking I-will-scratch-your-eyes-out-if-you-take-this-place-from-me mode. After explaining our situation to the realtor (and near-begging, I should add), we left our showing to wait for the owner's decision.
The next day, we were listening to live music in the French Market (a few blocks from the little house we were in love with) when our realtor called. WE GOT THE HOUSE! Again, nearly peed my pants. We sort of made a scene.
It's really starting to hit us how much we'll miss our house and neighborhood, so I can't tell you how great it feels to know we're going to love our new home. NOLA, here we come!
