So, finally, the apartments

Undaunted by jet lag and pouring rain, on our first full day in Italy Danny and I set off with Pam and Romano to look at six apartments that Pam had lined up appointments for.

(If real-estate shopping bores you, please feel free to skip ahead...once I write the next installment.)

The six included all four of our top on-line picks from the month previous. There was the modern loft-like space on Via Ponte Romano that was up just one flights of stairs, and a cute two-and-a-half bedroom apartment, offered fully furnished, on Via Petrarca. The Via Cavour place was still available, so that made the list, and so did a three-bedroom on Via Minzoni with a full kitchen and a view of the back side of Fidenza's 11th-century Duomo.

All four were in the center of town, a short walk from the train station and an array of stores, bars, and other amenities. And all four looked to date from the 1950s or 1960s, when the town was being rebuilt after the American forces had bombed much of it to rubble during the war. (It was a rail hub then, too.)

Pam also arranged for us two see two newer listings, side by side in a building a little to the south but still close to the train station. This place was a bit newer, probably dating from the 1970s, which is why it was several stories taller than the older apartment buildings and had an elevator. The apartments had only two bedrooms each, but they had full kitchens and the asking price for each was only 75,000 euros. Why not take a look?

The Ponte Romano loft had been thoroughly updated, with new wiring, electrical outlets everywhere, and the core of a modern kitchen in place. Here are Romano, Pam, and Danny inspecting the latter.

It didn't have an elevator, but it was up just one shallow flight of stairs and it came with a garage, which we could rent out if we held to our plan not to have a car.




Plus it had two bathrooms and not one but two balconies, so plenty of light. I thought the view was cute, although Danny said, "Who wants to look into an alley?" Me, I guess.

The modernists who'd renovated the place had made it into one big room, and even if we threw up walls here and there we couldn't see how we'd get more than two bedrooms out of the space. But it did have two baths and two balconies...

The space where a kitchen ought to be

Our next stop was the apartment on Via Cavour. I half expected that Massimo wouldn't bother to show up, but there he was, looking stereotypically Italian in a purple sweater and a rakish scarf. (Why didn't I think to take his picture??) In person the apartment was as light and well laid out as Pam and Romano had told us. But the empty room that had once been a kitchen and the completely incomplete second bath promised all kinds of home-improvement misery.

We pressed on, heartened by the fact that most of the other apartments on our list had full, working kitchens.


At the other extreme, in terms of being occupation-ready, was the sweet little place on Via Petrarca. It had a balcony, too, and two bedrooms plus a third roomlet that could fit a single bed, or maybe bunk beds.

Best of all, it came completely furnished, including a set of dining-room chairs that we liked so much we were tempted to buy the place just to obtain them.

The kitchen even came with an industrial-strength cheese grater on the counter

And who wouldn't love to have this kitchen, fully equipped and ready to go? The storage room downstairs had stacks of pots and pans that were also included, plus numerous boxes containing who knows what treasures. No elevator, but up only one flight of stairs.

Next was Pam's favorite, on Via Minzoni. It had two balconies, from one of which you could see the back of the Duomo. (Pam assures us the scaffolding is going to come off one of these years.)

It also had a very nice kitchen, sleek and matching in the Italian style.

There were three bedrooms, two quite large and one a bit small, and though it only had one bath, Pam thought we could add one by carving space out of one of the bigger bedrooms. It was full of light, and it was well priced. There was no elevator, though, and it was up three flights of stairs. We had to ponder whether the kitchen, the savings, and the Duomo view were worth the possible sacrifice of our knees.

Exhausted, we went back to our friends' place for lunch. First we stopped off at the latteria for stracchino cheese, prosciutto, mortadella, and cicciolata, a local variety of head cheese that looks like chocolate halva and tastes like heaven, if heaven were made out of pigs. Some vegetable soup Pam had whipped up, a salad, and the latteria's excellent bread rounded out the meal.

We decided that whatever apartment we ended up choosing, we were definitely in the right part of the world.

We had two more places to look at, and luckily we weren't crazy about either of them. Elevator, yes; but only two bedrooms and one bath each.

The decor reeked of the '70s, Italian version. I particularly admired the groovy wallpaper in this bedroom...

..and the bold pattern choices in this bathroom.

All highly amusing, but I suspected these features wouldn't wear well as time went on.








I was grateful that we were able to write off these last two possibilities as no-goes. The other four offered us so many different things to choose from, and I already found myself struggling to remember which apartment had the red tile kitchen floor and which one had the funny communal attic with clotheslines running across the room. Danny and I decided it was time to head back to the Albergo San Donnino for a nap and then some serious discussion. Were we ready to make a decision, or did we need to find some more apartments to look at?