So now I’ve officially been to Gainesville. My parents and I went apartment hunting there this past weekend. I had a list of seven or eight places that I had originally wanted to take a look at. After we saw the first place, I had scratched four of them off of my list. How, you ask? Because I noted that they didn’t have washers and dryers in them, and after taking a look at the first place’s “laundry facilities”, I knew that a washer and dryer was a necessity, not an option.
So we looked at a few other places before deciding upon a complex called Hidden Lake. It’s very new; in fact, I’ll be the first person ever to live in my apartment. I’m about a mile and a half away from campus, but the buildings I’ll be going to the most are on the other side of the campus. So I’m really about 2 1/2 miles away.
Anyway, we set a move-in date, and paid all the up-front fees (that is to say, my parents paid them 🙂 ). Come late July, I’ll be in Gainesville for good!
Notes on the trip and other things:
- I’ll just come right out and say it…Gainesville has the worst street-numbering system ever. Here’s an idea of how it works. Gainesville consists of approximately 15 different zip codes. If you cross into another zip code, street numbers can be (and will be) used again. This may be fine for the locals, but for tired newcomers who just want to know where NW 23rd Blvd. is, it’s not good. On our trusty map, we found multiple NW 23rd Streets, Terraces, Places, Avenues, and even a Court or two. But no boulevards. Even if we had found one, we’d have to know the zip code. We eventually wised up and started calling the apartments for directions from one place to another. I get the feeling that map’s going to get some use from me in the future…
- The campus is huge. I’m not sure how I can emphasize this. I know that I didn’t see even a quarter of the campus. It’s not quite like Alabama, where driving on the perimeter of the campus lets you see a good portion of it.
- The bus system in Gainesville is apparently a big thing. Such a big thing, in fact, that practically every complex we talked to touted their closeness to the nearest bus stop. I guess it beats trying to find a parking space among potentially 50,000+ cars. And it’s free for me, since I’m a Florida student. Rock on!
So is the complex on/near a lake? If not, there’s another strike against the naming system. As for the bus system, that’s pretty cool…none of the bus/shuttle tries in Tuscaloosa ever seemed to work. I would have loved to ride a shuttle to class sometimes…
I didn’t see a lake while I was there, but they could always argue that it was a (wait for it) hidden lake.As for the bus system, I think that it’s going to take a little while to figure everything out, but I do like the fact that I can take my bike along to get around campus and just use the bus to get to and from the campus itself. They’ve got bike racks on the front of the bus…pretty neat stuff.
Ricky, I think they started sending a trolley to Rose Towers after you stopped living there. I actually rode it once to Graves Hall. It was very pleasant and saved me from being late.