Apartment description

As Naomi mentioned, we got an apartment in the Ixelles neighborhood, near Louise and Porte de Namur, for you Brussels-savvy readers. This is a relatively chic neighborhood, close to lots of fancy and fashionable shopping. It's close to several public transportation options too, which is nice since we opted not to get a car. We don't know anything about any of our neighbors yet, but we've started to get to know some of the parents of JoJo and Amelia's classmates.

The apartment is up 3 flights in a building without an elevator. The kitchen is almost comically small. Where is the silverware? Why, it's in the kitchen drawer-- the only kitchen drawer! But honestly, we saw smaller kitchens. The apartment has 3 bedrooms, and 2 toilets (some 3-bedrooms we looked at only had 1 toilet, which boggled my mind). The living space is on the lowest apartment floor, the bedrooms are up one floor, and a non-trivial (but not huge) roof deck is on top of that. It's very expensive, but with our short-term (5-month) lease, our requirement of 3 bedrooms plus furnishings, a strong preference to be reasonably close to the kids' school, and our compressed timeframe for finding an apartment, we didn't have tons of options. The apartment is actually a decent size (the small kitchen notwithstanding), and has ample closet space and a real homeyness to it. (I assume pictures of the apartment will follow presently, but that's more in Naomi's department.) The apartment also has decent natural lighting (during the few hours the sun is up), but has generally unremarkable views. In the end, though, I think we're really pretty happy with the living situation, and glad we're here.