Our house... in the middle of our street... our house...

A few photies of our new place... for those who are curious as to what other people's places are like... like me.

And so....

Having slowly but surely been bringing bags of our accumulated crap down to Cork from Dublin in the vious two months, the time eventually came to move into our new place, which I had chosen myself, paid the deposit, etc - without Cath ever having seen it.
Take a second for that to sink in now folks - Cath trusted me to get us a place (again) without ever seeing it. Now I don't know about other guys - but the impression I get is that most wives wouldn't trust their men to do a load of washing - but my wife let me get us a place.
And wasn't she glad she did when she saw the penthouse, as I like to call it.

Not only did I get us a cool place, but I bartered the letting agent down 100 euros from the price they wanted (which also just shows how over-priced places are).

But it wasn't all perfect straight away. No - our postbox had no key, the electricity man came round two days later to cut off our power (previous tenants hadn't paid up) and our washing machine was bust - and there were a few other odds and ends to tie up. But all problems could be forgotten as we sank into our couches, put our feet up and relaxed, looking out over Cork City with the hill in the background.

I can't stress quite enough how much crap we have. The boxes would have filled a room - well, they did actually - as I had to store many of them in my previous place before I got a few friends to help me with the move. We filled the car three times - to the roof - making trips backwards and forwards.

But now, one month later - our place is looking homey.

My old place, by comparison, was a dive. Actually - it was a dive in comparison to any place.
But guys can live like that. I was happy to, seeing as I was having to pay two sets of rent in one of the most expensive countries in the world. At least now I'm back to one rent debit a month!

This was my room at my old house:

The only thing that I will miss about the old place is that just nearby, down a narrow lil walkway, was this bridge with a great view and a park where I used to go and read in the sun (when it was out). This was the view from the bridge - shaky bridge as it was called.