Cornerstone

As our current apartment lease expires in August, we've started looking into different places to live.  This apartment is fine, for the most part, but it's just not where we want to be.  There aren't many shops or restaurants around us, and it would be nice to live in an area with more options.

I pop into the Ireland real estate site every now and again to see what's out there.  I checked out an apartment complex called The Cornerstone, which is in Stillorgan.  Stillorgan is about 4 miles from us to the north.

We needed to take bus E1 to our destination, and the bus stop for this route is over by our veterinary clinic.  As the cats were nearly out of dry food, this was one of those "two birds with one stone" types of situations.  Eli went to pick up the food while I sat at the bus stop.  My ankle gives me trouble every now and again, so I thought I would save some steps where I could.

Just as Eli exited the vet clinic, our bus was headed toward us so that was great timing.  (The bus must not've known I was going to be there because otherwise, with my bus-luck, it would've either been late or not arrived at all.)

After a 15-20 minute ride, we got off the bus and had a short walk to the apartment complex.  We wanted to get the lay of the land around the building - see if there were anything that might pique the cats' interest (trees, people walking with pets, cars).  It's important to us that they have some kind of stimulation because they don't have much of that here.  Depending upon the apartment orientation, there was either some nature or a busy street.

Stillorgan Shopping Centre is right across the street from the apartment building, so we wandered over to see what stores were available.  There was a young couple with a pretty long-haired dachshund, so I started cooing at the dog and the couple stopped.

The dog (we failed to get his name) wasn't having it.  He went into protect mode, barking and lunging at us.  The woman squatted down to talk to the dog, and we chatted with the man.  I told him that I'd had a dachshund while growing up, and I said that Heidi was forever staring up at trees, hunting chipmunks.  Once, she was chasing a chipmunk, and it reversed course, plowing into her.  Neither animal seemed to know what to do and froze, before the chipper started running again toward the tree with Heidi in pursuit.

After these few minutes, the dog suddenly decided that we weren't a threat.  He came over and sniffed at our shoes, allowing pettings and licking our hands.

We walked around the mall (there are TWO bookstores, y'all, and the Stillorgan Library is temporarily housed on the second level).  At the mall and up and down the street, there were multiple restaurant options that would cater to Eli's vegetarian diet - and an Eddie Rockets (50's style diner) that would cater to mine.  Just down the hill was a vet clinic (interestingly, you'd take a street called The Hill to get there), about a 5-minute walk from the apartment.  The bus stops are very close so transport would be a breeze.

There are five separate buildings/wings to the complex and they're each named after an author/actor/artist with links to the area:  Maeve Binchy, Dermot Morgan, William Orpen, Eavan Boland, and Samuel Beckett.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we might be able to move there in a few months' time. The area seemed to check a lot of boxes for us.  We reached out to the management company but since we're not moving until August, they asked us to reach out to them again in June/July.

We walked to a bus stop across the street from the apartment so we could head towards Dundrum.  Each of us had a book holding at the Dundrum Library, and we were going to catch the tram back home.  We only had to wait a couple minutes before the L25 bus rumbled up.  Again, the bus must've been unaware of my presence because it was a painless transaction.

After a short trip, we collected our books from the library and made the quick walk to the Luas platform.

I don't want to get my hopes up.  There might not be an available apartment for us when it's time to move or they might reject our application.  So I'll keep looking at other options but Cornerstone is definitely at the top of the list.