Arrival! You guys! YOU GUYS! YOU GUYS!!! I live in Portugal now! WHAT!? The trip here was... ugh. Not just the flight which, departing Toronto at 11 pm was UGH. I mean, it was dreadful, but less dreadful than it could have been. Just arrived jet-lagged, exhausted, the usual for a transatlantic flight. But it was HOT. We arrived on a record-breaking day of hotness. 107 F? Some kind of nonsense like that. So being jet-lagged led directly to being constantly sapped of energy by the heat. That was a LOT. But okay, we got here... It's great. Our apartment is great. The setting is great. The city is great, it's all just as wonderful as I'd hoped. First thing, the apartment. So it's got a weird shape, but nothing wrong with it, just weird. It goes right THROUGH the building from one side to the other, which means that there's always a pressure differential as the moving air piles up on one or the other side of this 10-story, block- long apartment building. So you can always open a window and get a breeze. The windows themselves have a clever weird strap-and-wheel-and-stacking arrangement that means that the windows can be fully dark (stacked), let in light and air (unstacked) or be wide open. By manipulating the windows to counter the sunlight you can keep the apartment pretty cool even on the hottest days. Not that we did. Joy cleverly booked us into a nice hotel on the other side of the park from our apartment, so we've had a few days to get things in like a mattress, a refrigerator, and some bathroom supplies. Tonight is our first night sleeping in the apartment and it looks like it's going to be fine. --------------------------------------------------------------- | v | | __| | bath1 | |__ | | bedroom2 | / _________________ bedroom3 | | | /-/ -| | / | --|__________________/ | | /________________|-- | | | bath2 | \ | | bedroom1 | | \ \ | | \ |__________\ | bedroom4 | |__________________\ ___|________________| | |cls| vestibule |cls| sink |__ __| |___|__ __|___| [ ] oven|_|l | |b | |------ ------| -------- [ ] a | |a | living / \ u | |l | room / __________________ \ kitchen _ n | |c | | | | |________ __| |d_| |o | / | |------------ | cls | | | | |n | fake / | |closet / |___/ -- --| |y_| fireplace | \ | |__wine_rack_| / | | dining? | |___-----______|_ \__| ___ __/ _|___|____________| |door1||ele| |door2 |stairs____ | | ||vat| | | ==== | | ==== | | ||or_| | | ==== | | ==== | | |----------------- | ==== | | ==== | |neighbor The apartment has LOTS of weird things like... No bedroom closets - instead there is one closet on each side of a vestibule formed by two pocket doors that can separate the living room and kitchen from the bedrooms (I guess if you're having a loud party?) A small... dining room? off the kitchen? It would be okay for two people somewhat cramped for four. And off that little room, a littler closet? A closet in the space between the two doors (oh, did I mention, a front and back door?) which has a hexagonal terracotta wine rack in it, as well as a bunch of cubbies? A faux-fireplace mantle in the living room just because? A small European-style elevator RIGHT outside our door, which also serves the neighbor who has to take twice as many (so, two) steps to reach it. A weird tiny second bathroom. A painted-over window (v) between the big bathroom and bedroom2 which, if it could be open, would vent the bathroom, but doesn't. THREE EFFING BALCONIES The whole place is just great.