Queen Margaret Drive

After spending a month in an airbnb flat, we finally moved into our “permanent” home on the other side of the West End. Unlike our previous accommodation (and most of Glasgow), 166 Queen Margaret Drive is not a traditional sandstone tenement block but a more modern (7-year-old) brick apartment house. We miss the high ceilings, moldings, and stained glass of our former place but not the 81 steps to the top front door (we now have the luxury of a lift). On the ground floor, there's a small Tesco market, Chinese restaurant, and betting parlor. We’ve yet to try the restaurant or the bookie, though it’s interesting to see what you can bet on and at what odds. While the décor here isn’t exactly our style, at least there are sofas (albeit in magenta), beds, and funky lights (which give an almost disco vibe). Many of the other flats we looked at interpreted "furnished" to mean a mattress on the floor and a random end table, so this was one of the very few viable options. The housing market--at least in the desirable West End--is tight and on the expensive side. A two-bedroom, furnished flat in this neighborhood goes for 900£ ($1.55 to the pound); on top of that, everyone—including renters—pays a council tax for city services  (water, garbage, etc) that’s based on the size of the unit + neighborhood (ours is set at 155£ a month). Makes us wonder how all the students in our neighborhood are able to keep up with the cost of living.