Our Ohio Abode

Hello everyone,

We're having such a great time that I've fallen woefully behind in the blog posting and so I'm going to abandon my policy of posting things in the order that they happened in order to catch you all up on what we're up to right now!  

So first, a tour of our little abode in Hudson Ohio!

The house is one of the smallest in the neighbourhood (it was built as a coachhouse for the larger house next door) but at 1200 sq ft it is more than double the size of our flat in Edinburgh so we feel like royalty!

Here is the absolutely lovely street that we live on.  View looking towards the village.

Looking the other way on our street towards the Western Reserve Prep School grounds at the end of our street.

The view out over the neighbourhood from the side door:

My favourite part of the house is the kitchen.  It has beautiful custom cabinets and awesome appliances.  Note the fancy double drawer dishwasher.  So cool.

This is the livingroom.  Small but very arts & crafts style which reminds me of old Vancouver houses.

The dining room just off the livingroom:



Our bedroom upstairs:

There is a second bedroom (where Jason stayed when he visited) as well as a lovely bathroom.


The house is over a hundred years old and has lots of little built-in features which I love.  Here's one in the second bedroom:

The village of Hudson is pretty cute, it reminds me a bit of Steveston (where I grew up) and was originally settled in 1799 by people from Connecticut (read history here) so has the feel of a new England town. About two minutes walk from the house is Main Street which is filled with little restaurants, a bookshop, toy shops, all independent.  Lovely!

The town clock tower:

photo from here

Here are a few shots of the Western Reserve Academy at the end of our street.  It was founded in the early 1800s by Yale academics and then in the mid-19th century the college moved to Cleveland and became Case Western Reserve University.  A prep school now occupies the original buildings.   

The neighbourhood is gorgeous, mostly colonial style houses:

photo from here

And some more cottage like ones like this:

The story of how we ended up in Hudson:

Many of you have heard this story from us as it unfolded but for those that haven't here's a little summary.  We did not initially intend to stay in Hudson, when I was organizing my internship we had planned to look for a short-term furnished studio to rent in Akron (where I'm doing an internship at the Centre for the History of Psychology).  We were also planning to rent a car.  After quite a lot of looking around I was not having any luck finding rental options so I decided to try my luck e-mailing a community website's 'contact us' button.  Hoping to get in touch with someone who had a basement suite available, I explained that we would be in Akron for about 3 weeks and that we would be happy to pay or to offer our flat in Edinburgh for a house swap.  

Within about an hour I received an e-mail the man in charge of the community website saying that he thought he might be able to help us.  I sent him a bit more information (pics of our flat in Edinburgh and of us) and he then responded saying that he had taken the liberty of forwarding our request onto his friend who is the press secretary of the mayor of Akron!  Within a few hours I had received several e-mails from friendly Ohioans offering to rent us their houses and a few expressing interest in exploring a house swap.  

The O'Tooles were the first to contact us offering to do a swap and they offered to give us their car to borrow as well.  Over the past five months Margaret and I have  e-mailed, talked on the telephone, exchanged references, signed house and car swap contracts and even "met" each other via Skype.  They are a newly retired couple (formerly high school teachers) and seem absolutely lovely and they are staying in our flat as we speak enjoying the Edinburgh festival!

We will be meeting the man who initially helped us by sending our details to the press secretary this Saturday for breakfast and the O'Tooles are actually coming home a few days before we leave so that we can meet them as well!  An amazing story of American friendliness  which certainly made us feel so welcome here before we even set foot in Ohio.    

I recommend house swaps!