Our Apartment

As you can see from the photos, Calgary is very green and beautiful with tons of vegetation and gigantic trees.

We live on the south side of Calgary in a large apartment complex.  



There are eight, three-story apartment buildings grouped in fours around  beautiful, tree-filled courtyards.

Our two bedroom apartment is on the ground floor and luckily it looks out over the courtyard [rather than the parking lot], with a tiny balcony off our living room. 




 The rooms are spacious enough for our needs and there is lots of storage which is a plus.  The biggest drawback is there is no air conditioning or ceiling fans so we have to keep the windows open all the time which drives us crazy at night, especially when people have all night parties, or when the birds start chirping their heads off at sunrise.

Slightly less annoying is the lack of a garbage disposal [ugh], and having to pay $4.30 per wash/dry load.

All in all though, we like it quite well and have made it our own with pictures we brought from home.

Directly across the road from our apartment there is a plaza with a small Wal-Mart, a Bank, and a Home Depot-like store called Rona's.  There are also several Dollar Stores, KFC, Wendy's, Subway, A & W, MacD's, and a great seafood restaurant we love called Joey's [they have the best fish frys].  Just beyond those stores across the main highway there is a Safeway where I also do a lot of shopping.  All the grocery carts are locked together with a chain.  If you want a cart, you have to put a quarter in a slot on the handle.  After you finish paying for your groceries, they give you the quarter back.  The cost of living is higher here than what we were used to back home, especially gas.  The selection at both Safeways and Wal-Mart is much smaller than in the States, but we're adapting.  They've been out of milk several times when we've gone there, so we try to shop before we're actually out to make sure we have what we need.