Living in Grand Cayman

(please note that we made 2 posts today ; this one and the one below)

As mentionned in our previous post, we arrived on January 22nd in the late afternoon.

At the airport in Cayman, our preparation paid off.  It went really smoothly importing the animals.  We will definately write emails to all the vets & Inspections Canada people who helped us with the formalities.  Once cleared customs, we immediately made our way to our hotel, the Sunshine Suites ; a nice hotel with bedroom, livingroom, bathroom & kitchenette.

On the 23rd, we already had two homes to visit. We revisited the house in Mahogany Estates (see a post we did on Dec 27th for the pictures.  Its house No.1) and a second house that was new on the market. Both had good potential.  The owner of house No.1 did not seem very negociable on their price (too expensive), so the chances of renting it were slim. The new house on the market was a good size, but further from my work place & needed quite a few repairs.

Also on that day, we had to buy a new cage for Bijou.  His old cage (see previous post) was too big to take in the luggage and was old anyway, so we abandonned it at our last hotel. 

On the 24th, we looked at the local papers from the last two weeks that a buddy at work (Thanks Rory) had kept for us. In the papers, there were many private listings ; we called about 10 different owners to enquire about the properties, get the adresses and take a drive to see what they looked like.   We visited one nice property (The Green house. Pics are further) in Savannah estates.  3 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, an office space, a double garage & in a nice area.  Good potential.

 On the 24th I also started to work; I got my new office, phone number & laptop.  I missed not having a computer since our desktop is still in the container. 🙂

On the 25th, we revisited the Green house in Savannah for the second time & started discussions with the owner, a very nice lady. We made an offer to rent it for one year and asked for an answer by the 26th (friday) at noon.

On the 26th, we have a deal! 🙂  We are really happy with our deal.  The house is a very good size & in a great area.  Its 10 minutes walk to the grocery store & other stores, a 15 minute drive for me to work, has a really nice kitchen and large rooms, a fenced yard for Aipa and a big garage for me. The driveway is in a U shape and there are palm trees in front of the house.  We have no neighbors behind us ; its a meadow.

 Today, the 27th, we got our house.  We went today twice to do some minor cleaning, bring part of our stuff.  I went to CUC, the power company to get registered as a client, got our highspeed internet setup and scheduled our container from Canada to be delivered to our driveway monday morning. Meanwhile, Julie was at the house while the plumber was doing two minor repairs we had asked for in our contract.

Here are some pics of our new house for the next few years.

 

Garage

The kitchen with a gas stove & stainless appliances.

Other side of the kitchen with a fridge with integrated ice maker & water dispenser.

The front door & entrance. You can see that the house is all ceramics, this is pretty much standard in Cayman. Only the master bedroom is wood.

The dining room

The family room. We brought our TV cabinet and it will go here. The owner was nice enough to accept to remove some of the furniture we did not want. 

This is my office/second living room.  Some of the furniture here will be removed. My desk is still in the container.

The master bedroom. Good thing we brought our own bedding 🙂  Again, some of the furniture here will soon be removed.

The garage.  The door almost looks “fortified”.

The grocery store, “Fosters” 10 minutes walk away (yes, we timed ourselves)