House Hunting #1, #2, #3

 OH MY GOODNESS! We started house hunting today. I'm posting multiple pictures so that you can be amazed along with us. The first place we looked at is next to the castle downtown. It's also in the same complex as the family who will potentially teach our music lessons. Two points! I'm not sure if I can describe it adequately. We entered through the long hallway pictured below...

It's open, but covered by wisteria and some other viney plant. I believe this view is looking back toward the street entrance.

Just through these doors is a curling staircase that leads to an extra bed and bath.

The "passage" opens into a courtyard

On the right is the cottage. It has one main room, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom.

More of the courtyard and the cottage again. On the right you can see the bottom of the staircase that leads to the entrance to the main house.

Here's the opposite view. The bottom door leads to a kitchen and tavern area. There's an elevator in the kitchen that goes upstairs to the regular kitchen, but they said it's pretty slow. There didn't seem to be any other connection to the upstairs.

This is the far end of that bottom door...previous renters were setting up a restaurant, so it's filled with tables and chairs. The woman there is standing on a little balcony that overlooks a second courtyard. We didn't take many other pictures of this level because it was quite dark. In Italy, if no one is renting the space, there are no utilities...so in order to view it, you have to open all of the windows! We also learned that they don't clean or prepare properties before showing them. You walk through it dusty and cobwebby and then negotiate how much cleaning happens before you move in...

After leaving the kitchen, we walked up the stairs and onto the 2nd level. (I'm editing this a bit...after much discussion, we agree that the 2nd level had a kitchen, bathroom and living/dining areas, along with a huge staircase that led up to the 3rd floor where the bedrooms are). It had 4 bedrooms, fairly large, but really strangely shaped. This fireplace is actually on the 4th level, and if we choose this house, it will be because of this room.

There were 5 or 6 of these windows that look out over the city. The "magnificent" view of the castle was through one of these. It turned out to be a view of the top 3 feet of the castle!

View of the city from the window.

The room up here is really quite large...it had a dining area set up on one side and more of a sitting room on the other. Definitely big enough for school, a toyroom, a familyroom and then some. The light is fantastic and the view is nice, too.

Random bathroom...

Cool floor that Pianogurl took a picture of.

Downsides to that house are that it will take 30-45 days to have it livable...or longer.The realtor doesn't seem to really care for it. We'd have an extra floor for something...but the extra bedroom in the front and the cottage would be fantastic for guests and the location is excellent! We're also not sure of the exact price. Everything in Italy seems to be negotiable.

House #2 is a duplex

Marble floors in the livingroom...realtor said they need to be polished, but they are lovely. There's also a kitchen, dining room and "study" on this main level, along with a narrow entryway.

I believe this is the kitchen-to-be and the door led out to a little covered patio/veranda area.

Here you can see the "study" on the left and the stairs lead up to the bedrooms.

One of the bathrooms. It looks nice and quite modern. 

Italian light switches are flat and you can push the bottom or top in or out to turn it off or on.

There are also 4 bedrooms on this level and 2 of them are quite large by Italian standards.

One of the smaller bedrooms has a pull-down staircase leading to the attic. 

There's quite a bit of space up there. Eli was claiming it as his bedroom.

Heading back down the stairs

This house also has a basement with another room, entrance to the garage and a utility room with a full-size freezer and plenty of space for an American-size washer and dryer.

Same basement room...I think it's supposed to be a second living space.

Utility Room

Just outside the garage doors...although there's no way the van would ever fit in there or even be able to make the turn to try!

The major downside to this one is the lack of yard. The "yard" is the concrete and the line of bushes surrounding it and this pot. The Net was not well pleased...not nearly enough habitats for bugs! It's also just outside the wall...so not quite as convenient for walking as the other, but much closer to the Iper (which is like a small SuperWalMart, apparently.)

House #3 is out in the country.  Brace yourself! This was taken from the front of the house, looking down the driveway. The realtor told us it was relatively new...built in the late 1800s.

Here's a 2nd view from an upstairs window. The building you can see a bit of to the left isn't technically part of the property...but is quite large, as well...I picture it has the little house where Jane and Elizabeth were messing with the herbs and flowers and discussing Bingley.

Here's the back of the house. I guess we didn't take one of the front, but it looks about the same as the back.

The front door opens into what we'll call the Grand Hall...basically a big room in the middle. It has 3 doors on the right and 2 doors on the left. The back right leads into a room with a fireplace and there's another room beyond it.

Here's a better view of the doors on the right. The archway leads to the staircase.

The door you can't see leads into the kitchen. It's quite large for Italy and has a nice American refrigerator. You walk through to the pantry that is ENORMOUS! You all know how I feel about having space for food storage!

This is the pantry. There's an entrance to the outside for convenient loading/unloading and shelves along the walls you can't see.

Front left leads to this room with a fireplace and a little table. Through it you reach the maid's entrance that has a little closet and narrow stairs leading to the maid's quarters.

The dining rooms is entered through the back left entrance off of the main hall.

The bathrooms all look a little antiquated, but apparently the owner is willing to consider remodeling a couple of them.

After coming up the stairs, we walked through a bedroom to get to this library. We were all really excited about it!

These floors are original something...it wasn't marble, but the ladies were exclaiming over it like it was something just as good...

Like the downstairs, the upstairs has a great hall room that has doors coming off of it. I counted 5 bedrooms up there, including the library and 3 bathrooms.

This built-in wardrobe was int the maid's quarters. Very pretty!

One corner of the large back patio.

One of 2 identical garages on either side of the house.

You can see the other garage in the distance.

The ancient well...not yet covered.

 Apparently this one is an old family home that has now passed down to the cousins. They're willing to come down a bit on the price just to see it occupied, but even then, it's above what we receive for housing. The realtor didn't really like either of the larger places we looked at...she said this one would be much too inconvenient to live in, but I'm thinking her perspective (1 11-year-old child at school all day) is quite different than mine (5 kids home all of the time). There's a bus stop at the end of the lane, so potentially we could ride the bus and not deal with in-town traffic. I think we decided it was 2 1/2 miles out of town...so still pretty close. The mosquitoes were atrocious out there and we actually had to move a snake to get into the house (just a garden snake, but still!)  The boys were in absolute heaven. Pianogurl is totally in love...too much Pride and Prejudice. Songbird doesn't want to have to clean it! I'm still processing...feel free to cast your votes!

We'll see 2 more houses tonight and another in the morning. The realtor thinks we'll choose #2 or the one we won't see until tomorrow.