We found an apartment!

This morning, Michael and I placed a bid on an apartment and just found out it was accepted.  Apartment hunting was a little difficult at first because of Ireland's Catch-22: you are unable to open a bank account without having an address, but you are unable to rent an apartment without having a bank account.  Luckily for us, Kelley Maxham, my friend and MSU alumna who is currently living in Dublin, let us put down her address so that we could get the bank account.  It took an additional 3 days before we could get money wired into the account from America, but after about a week everything is finally set up.

The apartment itself is really cute.  It's on the 3rd and 4th floor of a building 3 blocks from Trinity, so I can get to my classes in literally 2 minutes.  The ground level is a pizza shop, the 2nd floor is mostly business offices, so it will be very quiet in the evenings.  We're on the 3rd floor with one other renter.  It comes fully furnished and stocked with plates and flatware, though we will have to buy our own pots and pans and sheets for the bedroom.  The apartment is a loft, and walks into a fairly large (for Dublin) living room / dining room area with the tiny kitchen and microscopic bathroom off on one side.  There is a staircase in the opposite corner that takes us up to the 4th floor to our bedroom (complete with a real closet - the largest I've seen in any apartment).  The floor doesn't go all the way to the far wall.  Instead it has a railing and you can look over into the living room.  The ceiling at the top is slanted, as it follows the roof-line, and there are two skylights where we can look up and see the continuous rain.

The Realtor said that there were other bidders, but as soon as she learned I would be attending Trinity as a post graduate she decided we wouldn't have time to do anything but study and would be great renters.

Our new address:

Meg Black and Michael Belcher
Apt. 5, 2 Fownes Street Upper
Temple Bar
Dublin 2
Dublin
Ireland