I lived in a farmhouse outside Meadville, Pa., for a year when the oldest Kerrkids were just Kerrtots. We lived on a dirt road next to a wildlife refuge and had nothing but open fields to the north and west – you could see for miles in any direction. It was an Amish village and we got to watch the buggies go by on a daily basis. Our landlords’ cows and horses were kept in the pasture on the south side. Great place to wake up to every morning.
Now we have a deck overlooking our hilly backyard in Chester County, and it’s a view of a pretty landscaped acre and some woods. I like it – nice and private. And from the front, a little white church and rolling hills. And the neighbors’ ginormous Colonial house.
The best was a college dorm room. The college is built on the outskirts of town - the town kind of stops there because in order to go any further you have to climb a mountain. I lived at the very top of campus, and my dorm faced out over campus, and the rest of town. And the room pretty much faced west, so I got the full sunset every night.
I’ve never had an awful view, but the worst was from a room I rented in northern London, in a slightly less than booming area. There was just a sad little patch of grass and a fence separating it from the alley; nothing really worth looking at.
Wow, Ol’ Gaffer and enipla what wonderful places to be. Beautiful!
Sonnenstrahl, that was another great thing about my Queen Anne and a few other apartments I’ve had. I hate closing myself off from a view, no matter how mundane or dark it might be outside. On Queen Anne, even though my bed was near the window and the sun would shine in my face quite early half of the year, I preferred to put a folded dish towel over my eyes rather than shut the blinds.
Best: I attended a camp on an island in Lake Winnipesaki. You could see the Osspiee mountains, and on very clear days Mt Washington. I remember one year on our overnight at the waterfront waking up to a GORGOUS sunset over the mountains…and then I fell back to sleep.
Worst…dunno.
I’ve never had anything interesting out my windows. A front yard in suburbia, a street and parking lot in my college dorm, and the adjacent apartment building in my college apartment. I kind of want a nice view when I get a new place. There are some older condos that overlook the Columbia River, but the only ones that ever sell don’t have any view.
My freshman year housing at UC Santa Cruz was probably the best view I ever had, although I couldn’t see it from my dorm room - I had to go to the lounge to see it. It wasn’t precisely the same as in the picture - we didn’t really see any houses or anything. It was just hills and trees down down to Monterey Bay.
Um. I liked the view from my balcony in Bulgaria, too. I don’t have any pictures readily available, but it was of the Balkan Mountains to the north. Really beautiful. In the winter as I walked to school, the rising sun would color the snow on the mountains with reds and pinks. It was pretty fantastic.
Worst view? I dunno. Nothing really terrible is springing to mind. Even when I’ve lived in cities, I’ve never lived like, next to an ugly factory or anything.
The best view? Vancouver, all of it. When I first got there (after living in Flatsville) I just stood and stared at the mountains all day. When I tried pointing out to the neighbour kid how amazing it was she stared at me like I was crazy. C’est la vie! Even after I got used to them it was still quite a thing to always be able to tell which way north is thanks to the huge ass-mountains all around you.
The worst view? It seems that every other Chinese hotel room I’ve stayed in, no matter how swanky the hotel, has a generous view of a giant construction pit.
Best view: A rolling green meadow backed by a woods. In the meadow were sheep. This was the view from our kitchen window when I would wash dishes when I was in high school.
When I was in the Navy, I spent 6 months in Sicily, and from the balcony outside my door, I could see Mt. Etna. It was especially impressive at night, as it was erupting while I was there.
Worst was at the first house I owned. There was a mom-n-pop store right across the street. My bedroom looked into their dumpster. Yum.
Best = ?
Worst = City of Madison approaching the Isthmus - Warehouse with parking lot directly across highway. - Multiple railway tracks after parking lot. - Another busier highway.
The airport had a flight path over the place. A short distance away you drove through the Oscar Meyer processing stink that made you choke and gag. The neighbor had the apartment complex always stinking from Hindi food. The smell was the worst part. A year after leaving gangs and gun crimes started to be a problem.
I had my first crazy drugged person encounter there trying to get into my apartment. The air conditioner worked after 50 weeks in a 52 week lease. Three retarded adults lived next to us and they ran around all night having sex games and did bed banging against the walls. The retard guy was finally evicted after months of complaints. The retarded neighbors had a pile of garbage up to 1 foot deep on the floor and caused the spread of vermin through the whole complex.
Best: When I was 5, we lived for a year in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. My room overlooked our back lot/garden, the bottom edge of which was bounded by train tracks. As a train-obsessed little boy, I would sit at the window late at night and watch the trains go by – more than once, my parents would find me in the morning asleep at the window.
Worst: The dreadful basement apartment I had for six years in Saint-Henri. The front windows overlooked (underlooked?) busy, dusty, grimy Saint-Antoine street and the back windows looked into the building’s grim parking lot. (Hamish’s room had sliding glass doors that looked into a concrete pit made to receive them.) The whole apartment was appalling and the only reason we stayed there, besides being poor undergraduates, was the ongoing housing crisis that scared us with the prospect of not being able to find anything as cheap, or at all. What’s tragic is that that is the second-longest I’ve lived in any house.
Best- I rented a wing of an old mansion and there were 12 windows along the 35 foot wall. It was a couple stories up, on a hill and overlooked the Minneapolis skyline which was so beautiful at night.
Worst-My first apartment all by myself. It was a “garden-level” apartment and the only window had a view of the parking lot when no one was parked there. If someone was parked there, I would get the view of the rear end of a Buick LeSabre (which, if cold out, would be left running and fill up the apartment with toxic fumes).
Best and worst were both the apartment I lived in from 2nd grade til 7th grade. At first the view from the front of the house was a big field (in the middle of a very slummy part of Worcester). There were lilac trees, two big weeping willows and lots of grass.
Then they chopped it all down, paved it over and added ugly low cost condos type things.
Worst view was my basement apartment in Little Italy. We had a total of four windows, and two of those were obscured by the owner’s garden in summer and snowdrifts in winter. Ugh. No wonder I ended up with severe SAD that year… basement apartments tend to be dark little caves, but this one was especially bad.
Best view was the condo The Boy owned when we first met - floor to ceiling windows showing off a huge swath of Lake Ontario, with Hanlan’s Point to the east and Ontario Place to the west. Perfect spot to watch the Ontario Place fireworks displays during the summers and the Labour Day airshow performances, not to mention some incredible sunsets year-round. I miss the view, but not the condo… it was a teeny little one-bedroom shoebox, and we’d have gone nuts trying to live together in that space.
The view from our current place isn’t anything special - we’re on a residential street and surrounded by large mature trees on all sides. The best we get is an occasional visit from some blue jays and woodpeckers who enjoy the large spruce in front of our bedroom window.
Best: where I live now. From the front windows across the street endless valley, meadow, disappears to thick woods. Depending on the time of year/day deer, wild turkeys or peacocks graze.
Worst: first house as a kid. From the bedroom window (close enough to reach out and touch) the dingy wall of the gas station next door. Oh and the smell of oil and gasoline
Counting only places I’ve lived since I moved out of my parents’ homes…
Worst: My first apartment junior year of college. All I could see was the parking garage across the alley. (Worse than the view was the sound when someone’s alarm would go off.)
Best: My dorm freshman year of college. I was in a triple, and the longest wall was all window from about waist height to the ceiling. I was on the top (18th) floor, facing north in downtown Milwaukee. I could see the courthouse and the library, and there was a glimpse of the lake to the east. Sunsets would stain the whole city pink, and at night, it was a twinkling mass of lights. A close second is my current apartment, which is on the northern border of downtown and just off the lake, facing west, so I get a lovely view of the downtown skyline–plus, I have a balcony.
