Looking For A Place To Live

So we've been here for about a week now. Mr. Milk started his new job yesterday and it seems to be going well so far. He is excited and impressed with what he has seen thus far. We've both felt that we are here on vacation. It still doesn't quite feel real, but at this point I think it will just take time. 

We took a couple of days to just relax and get over the jet-lag, and last Wednesday we went out searching for apartments to rent. We spent three days looking around Nicosia, the capital city, where Mr. Milk will be working. We found a vast number of places, but what stood out was how small many of the bedrooms were! We saw one apartment that boasted a roof-top garden, but the bedrooms were barely large enough for a baby! What good is a garden when there is hardly any space to move around within the apartment?! The other thing that Mr. Milk was rudely awakened to, is that most apartments don't come with appliances, aside from the stove. Stupid? Yes! Common? Very. I don't know why this is the status quo but it is. 

We've narrowed down our choice to 3 apartments. Unfortunately most of the pictures are on Mr. Milk's iphone so I can only show you one. It's our first choice anyway, but I only have pics of the outside at the moment. It's still under construction and will be available August 1st.

This is the building from the back/side view. The apartment we are interested in faces this way. 

Here's some of my handy, childish photoshop work, to show you which one we are interested in. Its "L" Shaped so isn't as big as it might seem from this picture, although it is one of the largest we have seen. 

Here it is again from the very back. The balcony doors are for the joint kitchen, living room, dining room, and the 2 windows to the left are for the master bedroom which has an en-suite bathroom. It's a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment, which I think we could be very comfortable living in for several years if we had to.

The other apartment we saw is furnished and belongs to a friend of Mr. Milk's. Basically its a bachelor pad. While Mr. Milk was very excited when he saw this apartment, I was less so. It wasn't as bright, or roomy, or clean (men!), as many of the others, especially compared to the one above. But the catch is, that since he is a friend, he will rent us the apartment for the same price as the unfurnished ones we've seen! This would help us out a ton financially. Problem is, I can't see us staying there for more than a year, at which point he will also likely want the apartment back.

So this is our dilemma thus far. Our stuff should be arriving mid-June and it would be nice to have a place to put it all! Luckily there is space at my parents house to keep it for a while if we decide to take the apartment in the pics.