House Hunt

We are currently living in the Pullman Hotel here in Cologne while we look for a permanent place to live.  The two adjoining rooms we are living in are quite nice and the hotel is being very understanding of our situation as many of the pilots and their families transferring over here are staying at this hotel.

Matt and I sleep in one room and Kellan sleeps in the other.  Matt and I have each taken a bathroom and closet of our own from each room, which is great.  We still have some stacks of clothes to hang up, but we don't have enough hangers.  The only place we have been able to find hangers the cost was about one euro per hanger ($1.30=1 euro, btw)!  A little pricey...so we are going to wait until we visit IKEA to make this purchase.

 Kellan has settled right into his room and has resumed his normal activities, such as pulling all of his "First Words" cards out of their  box.

 My bathroom.  Very nice to have my own space!

The hotel has offered to remove one of the beds from Kellan's room, so we may end up doing that to create more space in there.  For a free, temporary home, these are pretty good digs.

We looked at six apartments on Wednesday and got a better feel for the area.  We had a real estate agent drive us to each place - each one in a different part of Cologne.  There were two places we liked, one was in Lindenthal (circled in red), about ten minutes west from downtown (the inner circle colored pink on the map) and the other in Rath (circled in red), which is twenty minutes east of downtown and across the Rhine.  The one near the city is much smaller, but offers shopping and daily needs within walking distance.  The one in Rath is bigger with beautiful views, but is much further from the city and would require a car.  We just aren't sure which we prefer...or if our indecision is due to the fact that we aren't really crazy about either place.

We will be looking at another apartment in Lindenthal and an apartment downtown with a view of the Rhine River on Friday. We are pretty excited about the home in Lindenthal because it is next to huge park, is fully furnished and close to downtown Cologne.  Hopefully it will be as great in person as it seems online...  I will let you know how it goes!