busyEarlier today we went looking at a couple of places for rent, one in Edinburgh, in the suburb/area/locality of Morningside, and one in a town about 15 miles away called Linlithgow (another place with a castle in the middle of town).
The Morningside flat was ... well, a typical flat, not hugely different from moderately older style flats you might see in Melbourne (apart from being furnished, as the majority of places for rent around here are). Not bad, probably not quite what we're looking for (it'd be nice to have a parking space of our own, rather than fighting the other residents along the street for on-street parking).
As an aside, it strikes me as a little strange that new blocks of flats around here aren't forced to include parking spaces. There's little enough parking in most areas of Edinburgh, and every new block of flats will generally increase the population density and demand for parking spaces. Most new Melbourne developments these days, even in middle suburbs (say, 5-15km out), generally have to include on-site parking, either in garages, or when more flats/townhouses/etc are involved, maybe as an underground carpark or similar. Seems odd that it's not required here by whatever planning committees/councils oversee such developments.
The Linlithgow place was something rather different. It would have had Melbourne real estate agents screaming "huge", "like a house", and so on, but had a relatively calm description here. It had three bedrooms, one "boxroom" (another local oddity, seems to be common for houses to have a random space not big enough to squeeze a bed in, so it gets called a boxroom), and plenty of space. We could possibly even squeeze in all the people from Oz who've "booked" places with us for the Worldcon next year, maybe even without resorting to stacking people up on shelves. So, quite easily a large enough place for us, and not too expensive. Unfortunately, jobs are likely to be in Edinburgh or Glasgow. Commuting by car is a possibility, but would take at least 30-something minutes, up to over 60, especially in times of heavier traffic. There are frequent trains between Edinburgh and Glasgow, and they do stop at Linlithgow, but the fares for both of us commuting would probably pay the rent difference for getting a nice large place in the city centre in either Edinburgh or Glasgow.
rwrylsin suggested that living outside a city would be fine, which I mostly agree with, but I think that while we don't really know many people around the place, and haven't yet settled into the usual routines of fencing, fandom, dancing, etc, it'd be more convenient to be in one of the main cities. Anyway, we have job interviews in Glasgow on Thursday, so we'll have a look at some places there, and see where our jobs end up. Assuming we end up working in or near the same city, we'll probably end up in that city, at least for a while.
(random observations: Motorways here are just as crazy as they were last year, the nominal limit is 70 mph, but many people breeze on past at 80-100+ mph, ignoring the many fixed (and well sign-posted) speed cameras around the place.
People really do come out to sunbake when there's any decent amount of sunshine - it was 16ish C, and mostly clear the other day, and a few people were lying out in the park near our apartment catching some rays.)
