Puttin’ in work…
Usually, I would’ve hit the beach the first day I arrived, but this time, I hit the phones, and immediately set up appointments to look at apartments. It was weird not immediately gettin’ my “relaxation” on, as I normally would in Brasil, but I was on a mission! If I was to return in March to live, I HAD to have a place to come home to…and I had just five days to do it.
I hit the ground running, calling up real estate agents who specialized in renting apartments. That first day I met with a nice guy named Leonardo at Ancora Realty and Carlos at a company called Newville. The language barrier was tough, but we managed–and I got to see a handful of apartments that afternoon. Some were nice, some were not so nice, but we were makin’ headway.
Let me pause for a second, and tell you that there was one important thing I was looking for in an apartment…look now, if I’m going to leave everything behind and move all the way to Brasil, 5,000 miles away, ya know I GOT to have a view!!! If I was going to go through with this, the one thing I needed was to be high up, and face the ocean.
Anyway, back to the story–I got to see some cool apartments, but a lot of them were on the first, second, and third floors of these really tall buildings. They were cool and all, but I explained to the real estate dudes, that I needed to be “num andar muito alto!” (on a very high floor!) I saw all I could see on Monday, including a really nice (but expensive) crib on the eighth floor, overlooking the town square and the ocean, but the day ended way too soon.
It was back to the grind the next day, Tuesday, where I met with a girl named Valéria from RC Imobiliaria who showed me a few properties she had, then a 2PM appointment with Leonardo to see more apartments on his list. Keep in mind, absolutely ZERO English was being spoken here. Although I had a couple português classes under my belt, negotiating apartment leases in this language was terribly difficult. Add to that, I kept on seeing nice apartments, but on lower floors only–to the point where I was getting depressed and worrying that I wouldn’t be able to find a place. Again, I wasn’t going to give up EVERYTHING at home and move to Brasil unless things were absolutely perfect.
Once again, God must have been smiling down on me. Leonardo and I had just got done looking at a very cool pad, fully furnished and very modern, but once again, on the second floor–when something crazy happened. I don’t know exactly what went down, but upon leaving, he told the doorman there that I was looking for an apartment on a very high floor. All of a sudden there was some numbers exchanged, some phone calls made by Leonardo that I didn’t understand whatsoever, and then we were on our way to a new place.
We got to the corner of Rua Dos Navegantes and Ribeiro de Brito, we were rung in by the doorman (all these apartments have great security), and headed to the elevator. I couldn’t believe by eyes, as Leonardo hit the button to the 25th floor…the highest floor of the building. Twenty seconds later, the elevator doors opened, and we stepped out, and right into the apartment 2501.
And this is what I saw…