We wanted to get into town but ended up driving around looking for properties in nice areas. I love the townhouses in Hackney, they remind me of the Dutch houses downtown, very old, with steps up to the front door and a basement with a kitchen; very nice! The only downside was parking; it’s hectic in Hackney and parking would be a pain.

We have been looking for houses while we were still in the Lowlands and found a really cool apartment in an industrial area but we never really looked into it. So I asked A. to take me there, just to see what we would’ve missed out on. So we ended up driving around the industrial site looking for the entrance of the building when the security guy outside the gate told us we could come in and have a look.

So we parked the car and walked around a bit when he came over and told us we could actually have a look inside. He gave us the keys to two two-bedroom apartments, they were really nice but way to small for us and very hard to organise; there was hardly any storage space, in fact none and we really need three bedrooms so we can have people over to stay, stash all our crap in one room and have our office space in the other.

There was only one three bedroom apartment left which was on the sixth floor, the security guy gave us the keys and we went into the elevator up to the sixth floor. It was a huge penthouse [102 Sq M] with an amazing view of the city, laminate flooring throughout, a huge huge! terrace, a huge living room, two bedrooms ensuite, one had a bathroom with toilet and bath, the other had a bathroom with shower cubicle and toilet. And the third bedroom was on the opposite side of the lounge.

It was amazing and we are having serious doubts now about the house next door which A. is planning to buy, since it is the same amount of money but much much much bigger. It’s just the location that we were not really happy with. A really dodgy place and I know I wouldn’t feel happy having to walk around there in the middle of the night or even when it gets dark early. Another problem was public transport and since the Olympic Village will be build nearby transport will probably get worse as in busy. We will have to get some more info and think hard…

Here are a few pictures that I found online, some are from a different apartment but have pretty much the same feel, size etc. just to get an impression:

Entrance, sixth floor is actually one up, this is the fifth floor but it looks the same

Footbridge

Front of building, we saw the ground floor apt first while in the Lowlands, they’ve extra floor

View from terrace

View [Canary Wharf]

View inside from terrace

Lounge [but other one is bigger and has kitchen on right]

Kitchen

Bedroom 1 [see floorplan]

Floorplan