Relocating to Rita Street

"May the roof above us never fall in, and may we good companions beneath it never fall out." - Irish Blessing

September 25th, 2012
The day we first laid eyes on our new home.
Our house hunt in Malta had got off to an okay start. We had only seen one other apartment prior to viewing this one, so we didn’t really know what to expect. Being told that four bedroomed houses are difficult to find, we wasn’t expecting much.
Ana, the estate agent showing us around, had told us that the property we were about to view was one of the best four-beds that she had seen on the market in a long while. Excited much?
On arrival, Ana introduced us to the caretaker of the building which our apartment was in. Cen-su was him name, being adorable was his game! It’s the Maltese for Vincent, but we prefer Cen-su, after all, we are in Malta! He walked us around the apartment, taking us in all the different rooms, showing us how things work, portraying the friendly character he is.
Now we knew this was only the second property, but it was proving a winner.

September 26th, 2012
The day we made sure.
After viewing all five different houses, one particularly stood out. So we decided to view it again, just to be sure.
Meeting Cen-su for the second time, gave us a sense of security within the building, which is good right? Needless to say, he was pleased to see us four again. Splitting off in different directions, the apartment was inspected head to toe. We were sure, for sure.

September 27th, 2012
The day we met the landlady.
All excited and assured, we made another trip over to our soon-to-be home. This is when we met our landlady for the very first time. Again, Ana was there to introduce us to Mrs Pace (pronounced Parch). She didn’t quite fit my typical landlady image, more of a traditional, strict, Maltese grandma; but you're to never judge a book by its cover. She was lovely. We never had to ask a single question, she knew exactly what we wanted to know, after all this is not the only apartment she owns. We soon learnt that not only does she own the whole block of apartments, but she owns the most of the major pharmacy branches in Malta & Gozo. Impressive, and good to know!
This was just a brief meeting, where we paid our deposits to secure the apartment, as she had other people interested in viewing it. It was then that we organised our move in date.

October 4th, 2012
The day we signed the contract, and got the keys.
Just a week later and we were back again meeting with Ana and Mrs Pace. Running a bit late due to unforeseen events at the cash machine (no name mentioned, Jenny!), we still managed to make a good impression on the two professionals sitting right in front of us. Jeeeeez, there is a lot of paper work to this! You could have heard a pin drop when silence filled the room as we analysed the contract. Yep, everything was all in order to proceed. Contract signed, first month’s rent paid, agency fee paid, keys handed over, the place was finally ours to call home.

October 5th, 2012
The day we broke a chair.

It would have been ridiculous to think that we could have scrambled across Sliema with 12 full suitcases, four 'bags for life' full of food, a bag of cleaning stuff and ourselves in one morning. So we all agreed it would be easier to start moving some of our belongings in a day earlier than planned. This still proved us hassle.
After dumping our gear by the front door, we decided it was time for dinner. Casually sitting at the dinner table, sandwich in hand, conversation in flow, I felt my chair slipping. Thinking it was me pushing the chair back across the floor, I tucked myself under the table a bit more. Then much to my surprise, the chair totally collapsed, and I was eating my sandwich on the floor! How embarrassing. After the other girls had finished laughing at me, it turned a bit serious. When we first viewed the apartment, the table and chairs had like this powder preserve stuff on it, so we panicked thinking that it was antique! We didn’t know what to do, we had one been in the apartment 20 minutes (if that) and id already broken something... ooops.
We finally came up with a cunning plan: to place the chair back together and pretend we didn’t know a thing about it. Genius!
Just as that, Cen-su was at the door, dropping of salt and pepper pots for us (arww bless him), so I took that opportunity to tell him that some of the legs on the chairs were "a bit wobbly". I guided him over to the placed-together chair. All he did was slightly sway the chair side to side, I knew it was going to fall apart at any second, but it didn’t. He said "girlsss they are fine" and he left it at that. We were like they are reallly not fine, so we just banished the chair to the chockey, and left to pack more for the big move the next day.

October 6th, 2012
The day we moved in.
YAY!
The day finallly arrived to move into our new home. After two weeks of being in the country and living out of suitcases, we couldn’t wait to unpack (like you can imagine), and make it our own.

So let’s not delay any further, heres a tour of our new home:

Entrance:
Not quite the grand entrance like you get at a royal dwelling, however, it does the trick for now. Welcome to our Palace.

Reader's Corner:
Okay, so we didn’t really know what to do with this space. After a shuffle around of all the furniture we had three comfy chairs, a coffee table and a bookcase spare so we decided to put them together. At first it looked like a doctors waiting room, especially with a magazine just plonked on the coffee table, but now as the bookcase gains more assets, the more it lives up to its name.

Living Room:
A whole lot'a love for this living room, & boy what a view!

Balcony:
Imagine this: waking up in the morning, yawning and scratching your head as you draw back the blinds, and POW there you are looking out over Sliema harbour, with nothing obstructing your view apart from the odd blink. Clear blue skies, crystal waters and bobbing boats. Bliss. We are so spoilt with the views we wake up to. Seriously, we couldn’t ask for more!

TV Room & Gym:
Don’t get excited by the word gym. Unless a room with a rug excites you, then fair enough. We didn’t really know what to call this room, as we already have a living room. We use this space for doing fitness DVD's (at the minute we are currently tackling 'The 30 day shred') and also for stretches after our runs along the harbour. Yeah it has a TV too, but we haven’t even turned it on! We just use our laptops for that kind'a stuff.

Toilet:
Erm yeah.. pretty much self-explanatory, unless you are from 1205.

Dining Room:
eat. drink. work. play.

Kitchen:
It is said that the heart of any home is the kitchen. I couldn’t agree more. Everything goes on here, not just cooking, eating, drinking, but chatting, laughing, mocking and much more! We are not too sure about the brown sink though...

Hallway:
From one end to another, it’s quite a walk!

Georgia's Bedroom:

Claire's Bedroom:

Stacey's Bedroom:

Jenny's Bedroom:

Ensuite:
This is just as big as the main bathroom, if not bigger!

Bathroom:
What more could you want: plain, simple and very spacious.
...Oh, and the bidet leaks too.

Laundry Room:
Only a mother's favourite room...

Chockey:
Ever watched Matilda? If so, then you will know exactly what this is.
Well, it’s not really like that, but its where we put people/things if they misbehave.

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

S <3