House Hunting the Second

October 3rd

Today we looked at houses again.

The first property is in Lago Patria and is part of a gated community or parco.  It has the biggest yard we've seen so far, which would be great for Ta. The kitchen was on the small side, but most of the rooms had bright colors on the walls which was fun.  It also has nice views of the lake and a community pool.
	The outside of the house (left). A yard in which Ta could play (above).
	Can you tell Americans used to live here?  I can! (left) The rest of the main room and a peek into the dining room (above).

The dining room is half orange.  Here are doorways to the stairs, a bathroom, and the kitchen (above). The kitchen was pretty small.  The area to the right is a door that goes outside.  So there isn't much room to add more counter space or a table or anything (right).

The upstairs landing (left). One of the less colorful bedrooms.  Each of the rooms had a different color.  One was pink with a safari wall paper border around it (right).

		Another tiled basement/garage.  This one only had access from the outside.
		This parco had a community pool that we would be able to use.

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This property was also in Lago Patria.  It had several different fruit trees in the yard and very pink exterior walls. This property is in the process of being renovated, so if we choose this one, we'd be the first ones to use the new kitchen, bathrooms, etc. It had fun little pizza oven shaped windows and closets in two of the rooms.  Closets are unheard of here.  The Navy will lend us wardrobes because of this.
	This is a very pink house, on the outside anyway.  It has a yard all the way around it, so maybe Ta can run in circles.
	It also has a variety of fruit trees (left). The main room has a fire place.  The stairs are to the right (above).

		This is the dining room.
		This is the kitchen. It is currently being renovated.
		The stairs had two windows like this.  They are pizza oven doors.  I think they're fun.
		This is one of the bedrooms.  It actually had a closet.  Closets do not exist in Italian homes as far as I can tell, so this is a bit of an anomaly.
	This is the view of Lago Patria from the balcony of one of the rooms.

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The third property was in Licola, which we visited on Tuesday (House Hunting the First).  It was quite spacious, but it was mostly patio with very little actual grassy yard. This house's main feature was its rooftop terrace, which had lovely views down to the ocean.
The last house for today.  It has a lot of patio space, but as you will see, not much grassy space.

	This is the main living area.  It's a lovely shade of lavender.
	This is the kitchen.  It at least has a lot of space to add more counters and storage as needed.
	If you go out of the kitchen to the left, you will come outside to another patio and a view of the "yard."   I'm not sure if this will be enough for Ta.

Back inside and upstairs is the landing for the bedrooms (left). One of the bedrooms that goes out to a balcony (right).

	Another tiled garage/basement.  They really like to tile things here.
	The view from the rooftop terrace.  It was a little hazy today, but you can kind of make out the ocean.  It's the blue bit before the sky starts.

We are going to look at more places tomorrow, partially to see what else is out there and partially to fulfill our TLA requirements.   The Navy helps us pay for the time we are in temporary lodging with a Temporary Lodging Allowance (TLA).   To qualify for TLA here, we have to prove that we are given house hunting a strenuous effort.  This is defined as looking at a minimum of 10 properties for every 10 day period of TLA.

Since we have only seen six properties, we need at least four more to make the TLA requirements.  And since I'm not 100% sure about any of the houses we've seen (I think I like #2 from today the best), I want to make sure we can still receive TLA.  So more houses tomorrow! 

UAB Returns

October 1st

Happy New Fiscal Year!  For those of you who have new fiscal years starting in October.   The military does.  I think it's weird.

Today our UAB (unaccompanied baggage) is supposed to be delivered.  You may remember it from this post. (I just figured out how to reference past posts. Woo!)

A few days ago we decided to try to get our UAB back.  I received an email before we left the US that it was already in storage in Italy and waiting for us, so now that we're here we might as well get it.  The Navy Lodge has most amenities that we need but this way we could have some more clothes, decent cooking supplies, video games, and I could get my sewing machine.

The UAB was supposed to show up around 8:30, but we were informed it could be anytime during the day.

So we wait.

Dan went off to test drive a car.

And we wait.

I went off to investigate something called NOSC (Naples Overseas Club).  It was supposed to be a welcome social or something, but it was kind of disorganized and I felt really uncomfortable.  I did not stay long. 

We wait some more.

Dan decides to go into work for the afternoon.

I wait.

UAB finally arrives around 14:00.  It took all of 15 minutes for the movers to drop off our boxes.  We received the same number of boxes we sent, which is promising.  Now we have to go through them and see if anything has been damaged.  A few boxes are a little worse for wear but hopefully it's just the box. W insisted on investigating the boxes.  They weren't even open yet.

I test drove a car this evening.  Most of the vehicles here are manuals and I have not driven a manual since I had to drive my friend Mary Rose home (in her car) because she dislocated her shoulder.  Luckily for her, she had taken me out to practice driving stick the weekend before.   This was about three years ago.

At 16 my gather tried to teach me to drive stick in his F150 pickup truck.  I could not get that truck into 1st for love nor money.  Our big teaching adventure ended up with me stalled out in traffic with everyone honking at me, my dad yelling, and me crying.  So needless to say, my manual driving skills are rusty to nonexistent.  I see a lot of practice driving around base in my near future.

House Hunting the First

September 30th

Today is exciting because we are going to go look at houses.  Our housing counselor is Paolo.

We are going out to look at three properties today, each a bit different, to get an idea of what we might want (since we don't really know).

The first property is in Lincola and is huge, but not quite what we want.
The yellow house	The "yard". It's mostly paved. That dirt is the grassy area.	It has a nice lemon tree in the back though!
		This is the ground floor entry area.  Everything is marble or ceramic tile.
		This is the kitchen.
		This is the garage/basement. Yes, it is tiled.
Upstairs.  All the doors look like this.	One of the bedrooms.	Upstairs balcony and view.
		This is the view.  It's pretty sweet.  Those are peaches in the foreground by the way.

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The second property is in Cuma Licola and is also quite spacious.  It has these cool glass pocket doors on the inside.
	The walkway to the front door (left).  The landlord's sister lives next door.  So that's handy. Main room with cool doors (above).
	The cool pocket doors (left). The kitchen, which has a patio off to the right and a balcony to the left (above).
	Upstairs landing (left). One of the bedrooms with a balcony (right).
		Looking down into the yard.  They were doing some painting and updates to the house.
		The garage/basement.  This one is not tiled.
		The view.  It is also pretty sweet.  That is a tangerine grove right next door.  I bet it smells awesome in the spring, or whenever it goes into bloom.

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The third property was in Pozzouli and was part of a closed community that mostly caters to other military or NATO families.  It was a little less interesting than the other two, but still nice.
		This place was the first floor of a three floor apartment building.  It has a little bit of grass.
		The kitchen.  This is the biggest/nicest of the kitchens we saw today.
		The main room with a green marble fireplace.  We're not sure that we'd need a fireplace, though Paolo has assured us that it gets cold enough for them.  I'm not convinced.
	The hallway to the bedrooms and bathrooms (left). One of the bedrooms that looks out to the garden area (right).
		The view was lovely here as well, but it was a bit of a tease.  Look at the amazing things you could see, if the other building wasn't right in front of you!

We liked the second property the best, but would like to see more places to get a better idea of what our options are. We are going back out with Paolo on Friday to continue looking for a place to live.