Ok, I'm up to my eyeballs in packing boxes, early. (Better than rushing later.)
So. Moving to Glasgow. ETA last weekend in April. Have four big suitcases between the two of us that should allow us to take what we need for living out of hotels for a while, and the credit cards are completely paid off. Have booked us into one very budget hotel in our target area for two weeks, then another across the street for a third week. Sixty pounds a night, with a full breakfast every day, basically, at each place. (They're not the Ritz, but have decent reviews on TripAdvisor.) If we need more time, it'll be hostels or Uni housing, I think. I seem to remember that hotel rooms in May in Glasgow were in short supply when I last visited.
The thought was, if we find a place right away, we don't want to have to pay for several extra weeks at the same hotel if we won't need the room. If we don't find a place, we'll change hotels. At least that way if we can get into a place a day or two into one of our pre-paid (but refundable with 24 hour notice) weeks, we will only lose the one week's room charge rather than, potentially, several.
We are hoping we would be able to locate an apartment in three weeks. It doesn't have to be perfect, just a "landing" apartment. Furnished/Unfurnished doesn't matter. (Thank God for Ikea. If we end up not liking it, we can always move when the lease is up.) If we can move in immediately, great, if we have to wait to June 1 (or later), we'll go be tourists for a while. I'm thinking that in Glasgow West a lot of the students will be leaving at the end of May (term ends in mid-May) so that may hopefully provide more options for us. Would prefer to not move into student rentals, but, again, it just needs to "make do" at this point.
If anyone is familiar with the Glasgow housing market, are we being overly optimistic as to the timeline? We are looking to be renting a place for no more than 1,100 pounds a month, and that seems to be doable there - the farther from the Uni, the more the price drops, of course. Since we won't have a car, we'd prefer closer to the Uni (at least for our first apartment). We'd prefer a two bedroom, but, again...
As to the actual search: we have my daughter's laptop and her tablet. The first hotel only has Wi-Fi in "public areas" (I assume that means the lobby). The second has Wi-Fi in the room. My thought is that we will scan all the adverts just before we leave the USA and perhaps make appointments to view any that are showing as available after we arrive, if possible. I've set us up for alerts on several of the property websites, and thought that in the evenings we could check online to see if there's anything added that could phone for arrangements the next morning. Since we're arriving on a weekend, and I ~think~ May 1 is a bank holiday, we should have had time enough to sleep off the jet lag before going to look at housing.
When not looking doing that, we would do a lot of walking in the general area to get a feel for the neighborhoods. If memory serves, it stays light very late there in May, and we'll be very near the Botanic Garden, so a nice take-away picnic in the gardens (if it's not raining) in the evenings, after exploring a bit, might be nice. Thankfully there's a TV in the rooms, so it won't be like some places we've stayed in the past - shared bath down the hall, no phone, no TV, perpetually raining outside. (Great on the purse, bad on the cabin-fever!
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Any advice is welcome at this point.