House hunting in Sao Paulo: Our new home and I get a garden for free

I think I’m going to forget about hygiene and I’m going to walk barefoot on that mosaic floor.  If you’ve been house hunting you know how stressful could be to be looking for a home that offers everything you’re looking for and a little more.  If you add all that to be looking in a foreign country that you don’t know anything about, and which speaks another language, then you have all the scenarios to start biting your nails like a maniac.  We had two real estate agents who took us around, one spoke some English the other didn’t.  Spanish is my first language so I’m able to understand a lot of written Portuguese, but understand it when spoken, that’s another story.  Fortunately the real estate agents were very patient and we were able to find something that pleased us.  From our experience I could tell that Sao Paulo offers three types of homes.  The first option is a ‘casa condominium’, a group of 7 to 10 homes in a gated community.  After seeing three or four of these houses I started picturing myself ending up like the last Buendia character in One Hundred Years of Solitude, dried from depression and carried away by ants.  Ouch!  So sooner than later we decided that we’re not built for gated communities.  Second option is Free Standing Homes.  For all the good reasons you can imagine while living in a foreign country this one was out of the question.  At that point we were left with the third option; high-rise buildings.  I’m not very keen of high-rises, but when we came across this complex with many of the features I love from mosaic walls, cobble stone narrow hilly streets surrounding the buildings and beautiful pine tree courtyards, we were sold.  Brazil is known for its beautiful vegetation and nature so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I found out that in the middle of the entire complex there is a mini forest packed with monkeys that you can feed.  Lucas, our son, will be amazed by it. The apartment is higher than I would’ve liked it, but the view compensates for it.  It seems to be a very common thing in Brazil for the building have one apartment per floor so we also loved the privacy of the elevator coming directly to our apartment.

I’m not sure if this was a sign from God or if it’s freaky.  The building’s name has me and my husband’s initials and the funny thing is that neither one of us noticed it until just recently when we were showing the pictures to our family.

I’ll be having espresso here soon.  Yes you read that right, espresso under the sun if I need to.

This is part the mini Forrest.  I couldn’t take more pictures because they don’t allow outsiders to take pictures.

The view that I”m sure will inspire us in many many moments when we feel like strangers far from home.

I finally have a foyer.  I suspect that ceiling is calling for some patterns!  Uhm…

Since we’re not going to do any type of remodeling, I’m happy that the kitchen is in great condition because the bathrooms…ah… that’s another post.

I love the open and not exactly open layout of the apartment.  You are able to peek into the dining room and TV room from both sides of the living room.