My new home

Last Saturday, on 1 June, I moved into my new flat.  I must say it did look more spacious without the landlords' rugs, pictures, and some of his furniture, although now it has a kind of empty echo.  It's not a bad place, really - modern and clean looking, a dressing room full of drawers and hanging space and a view out over the bay.  But it is small - and unfortunately, very noisy with the twelve lanes of traffic going past down below on the Cinta Costera.  Nice though the main bedroom is, with floor-to-ceiling windows at one end looking over the bay (and the twelve lanes of traffic), I found I couldn't sleep through the noise and so I have reluctantly started sleeping in the other bedroom.  At the back of the flat, it has no windows and so is dark and quiet.

To my surprise I have also been a little cold at night.  Only sheets have been provided, so I slept in gym kit and socks all week until I was able to go shopping yesterday for a quilt.

Another surprise was that there seems to be virtually no radio reception at this height, and quite patchy phone reception - issues that I hadn't foreseen.  I have also been horrified to find that the orientation of the building and of the Hilton next door means that I get no sun on my balcony whatsoever!  A balcony with sun was one of my non-negotiable requirements but I just assumed that being more-or-less south-facing, I would get sun, not thinking about it being blocked by the position of neighbouring buildings in the morning and evening and directly overhead (even, strangely, slightly behind the building) in the middle of the day.  Maybe later in the year when it is a little lower in the sky it might sneak onto the balcony for a short time - I really hope so.  Although as you can see from the photo above, taken from my balcony, we aren´t getting much sun at present.

My main concern before moving in though had been the journey to work, as a trial run had taken 90 minutes.  However I found a better bus route, and am travelling against the traffic, so have found I can do the trip in an hour.  Not quite the five minute walk I had in Dakar, but bearable.

So I am trying to make the place feel like home.  The majority of my stuff isn't here yet - it hasn't arrived from Dakar - so I can't yet start putting books on shelves and hanging masks on the walls.  I've been shopping for some little things though, the quilt I mentioned above, a set of towels, a shower caddy ... also a bottle of wine but then I remembered that my corkscrew is not here yet so it will have to sit unopened for a while.  So I'm getting there.  Perhaps you could say my mood now is rather like the weather the other morning looking the other way from my balcony - cloudy but with sunny intervals.