Center City Strolling

Good Sunday, Bloggy Friends!

I hope you guys are enjoying your break from the extremely difficult workouts we've been doing this week. I can only imagine Rick is just as sore as he could possibly be! Poor thing, do you need an ice pack? :)

So, we officially kicked off our new apartment search yesterday in Center City. We spent about 4.5 hours roaming the different neighborhoods around the city that we felt would be best suited for our lifestyles. We kept our search within an eight block radius of the three major rail stations downtown - 30th Street, Suburban and Market East. These are the rails that Alan wants to be in close proximity to in order to make the commute to King of Prussia, where he works, everyday.

Like I said before, our lease doesn't end until the beginning of November, so we are a little ahead of the game here. We mostly utilized the time we had by getting a feel for the areas, and scribbling down the names and numbers of several rental companies. When I say several, I mean like five pages! So far our favorite areas are Washington Square and Rittenhouse. Each area hosts a wealth of amenities that we perceive as being particularly useful to us. Living here we would have access to a plethora of shopping, eclectic coffee shops, unique eateries, groceries and not to mention the fact that we would be surrounded by people who are more artistic and open-minded than what we find in Manayunk.

Our next step will be to start calling the names we gathered, and begin browsing potential properties on the internet. We'll work to establish contacts, and hopefully place ourselves in the forefront of the agents priority list. I'm really excited to start seeing places, so we can get a feel for what we'll find in Center City. We have pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that we'll have to sacrifice a great deal of space in the transition from the burbs to downtown. With two cats and a dog, though, we can't afford to surrender too much.

I think living in Center City will prove to be a completely different experience for us as citizens of Philadelphia. It will be a major relief to have the benefits of downtown-living right at our fingertips. No more driving in to hang with friends, waiting for the bus to take me to work/school or driving 5+ miles out to Whole Foods every weekend for groceries. It will all be practically at our door step. I'll keep you posted on how the process progresses.

I've attached a few pictures of our afternoon. I didn't take as many as I had anticipated. Later that night we met up with some friends for dinner and a few drinks before we made the trek back home. Enjoy!

I hope you all have a fantastic afternoon/day/evening. We are leaving in a few hours to make a trip to Wilmington, Delaware to see my friends Kelly and Ed. Do you remember them from San Francisco? They recently moved out here so Kelly could attend law school. They're having us over for dinner and a little catch up session. I look forward to seeing them. Talk to you soon!

Love, Josh