The Apartment

I'm in love with our apartment. Our apartment is the nicest, most beautiful apartment I've ever lived in. It's merely a one-bedroom, but feels like a mansion. Especially after the studio we lived in in Paris.

When you walk up the steps to our first-floor walk-up, the first thing you see of our apartment is its stained-glass front door. It's a double French door with stained glass windows. It's beautiful. You go in there and you see our patio. Our apartment is above a restaurant and a bakery, so we smell good smells all the time. It's weird, because it seems like we would see into other people's places from ours, but I haven't so far. The only person I see is the lady who hangs out her laundry when I'm in my bedroom. Anyhoo, back to description: our patio is, as of yet, pretty empty, but I have big plans for it. There is a sort of divider between a portion in which I will create a garden, and the other portion where our front door is. I think we will put a table and chairs near our front door. It will be lovely in the spring and summer when we can eat outdoors.

Oddly enough, there are actually two front doors... but we only use one. After the divider there is one to the left and one to the right. We use the one to the left. There's a darling lamp above - very old-fashioned Parisian style for me. And then, you walk into our front door...

On the floor, when you first walk in our front door, there is a sort of mosaic in tile. It's a circle and the rest of the tile is a sort of light terra cotta, but this mosaic is brown and beige and it was one of the things that made me fall in love with the apartment. Straight ahead, when you walk in, is the bathroom. The bathroom tiles are green - which you might think would be ugly, but I love them. There's a toilet, a bidet, a half-bath, a sink, a mirrored-armoire type thing, AND, drum-roll please, a washing machine! I would replace the bidet with a larger bathtub if I could (I do love my baths) but this one at least works as a bath, although I have to fold myself up into a ball in order to use it as such. I find that I do use the bidet here, more so than I did in my Parisian apartment when I had one. It's useful, if not necessary.

Returning to our entryway, if you turn left instead of moving on straight ahead, you find our living room. It's a very big living room - so big, in fact, that we are adding a piece of furniture we have purchased for guests. There's already a big sofa, a big chair, a big coffee table and a wicker bookshelf. We are now waiting for the pull-out sofa-bed we bought last night. The furniture is covered in white, there are blue cushions, green cushions, and red patterned cushions. The windows are large and the curtains are white. The walls are yellow. The walls throughout the apartment are a light yellow, and some of the ceilings are white. There's a sort of cubby in which I'm going to put a shelf or some sort of hanging shoe rack to put things in. It's not really a closet but not really part of the room either... It's a little weird, but I know what I want to do with it. I like the living room, but I don't spend too much time in it right now. If Domi and I get a TV, I'll spend more time in there, but that won't be happening for a long while. Right now I use it mainly to hang out the laundry to dry. When we get our pull-out sofa-bed I'll have to move that operation into the kitchen, I think.

Returning to our entryway and the only place left to go is right. There you immediately find our kitchen, aka my favorite room in the apartment. I'm in love with my kitchen. It has a beautiful round table with leaves around which sit four chairs with yellow cushions. There's a little free-standing bar where we have alcohol, wine, odds and ends, as well as the telephone and internet station. It has to be here because the telephone plug is right next to it, as is a power socket. It's probably a very good place for the phone to be, since it's a central location. The sink, cabinets, stove, and a fridge are all on the left wall. They are blue. I would not have chosen blue, but it works. The fridge door is attached to a blue cabinet door. The oven is big, and the stovetop uses gas. The oven is electric, but that's not a big deal. It works. Opposite the fridge is a light wood hutch. I think that's what they are called. There is storage on the bottom, drawers, a workspace and above glass cabinets. All in one piece of furniture. It contains our dishes etc. The kitchen is wonderful. I spend a lot of time in there.

When inside the kitchen and looking back towards the entryway, you can return to the entryway by going right, or you can continue straight to a corridor. This corridor is where the other front door leads into. You see that door by looking right, when leaving the kitchen, but that's all there is to the right. Straight ahead is another cubby, like the one in the living room, where Domi has a sort of launchpad for his things. Turning left down this corridor you come to our room.

Our room is big. The bed is big, the armoire is big. The windows are big. When walking in the bed is straight ahead, facing you. It is basically two twin mattresses put together. It's much bigger than our last bed was, which is good, because I was started to get annoyed. The furniture is matching dark wood. Directly left, when walking in, is a space where I will put my desk, and have a little work area, then immediately after that, there is our armoire. It's huge - a bit too big for the room, actually - but the nice thing is it contains all of our things. I have the right half and Domi the left. Next to the armoire is where our laundry baskets are. On either side of the bed are our bedside tables. They are matching, as are the lamps on them. When facing the bed, to the right you find a small dresser, above which is a mirror. Domi uses the dresser, because I use most of the center portion of the armoire. We hung Domi's framed painting above our bed. My guitar and sewing basket are next to my side of the bed. I can't wait to have my desk because I'll keep things on it and I'll get a sewing machine and have some more organization... I'm very excited.

Out back, behind our apartment is a small grassy area and another few apartment buildings. They are all small and old, and I don't actually see too many people. Which is fine by me, since I often sit on my bed with the shutters wide open, working on my computer as I am right now. I can often see my neighbor's laundry drying.

All in all, I love this apartment. I'm very comfortable here and excited about all the things I can do that I wasn't able to do before in Paris.

I love it here and I really like it here in Biella. Things are good.