Moving: Apartment Hunting

I'm searching for an apartment near where my new job is.  I imagine there'll be some interesting stories involved.  This is my first weekend looking.

Even though I've always had the best luck in finding places through an actual newspaper (not online), I looked online the night before I drove up.  I found several places in my price range that had pools (which is a necessity since it's 100 degrees here this weekend.  Literally.).  I also want the place to have a refrigerator.  Of the three states that I've live in, California is the only one that doesn't offer refrigerators as standard appliances in their apartments.  It's weird.

I called the apartments before I left on Friday, asking for appointments for Saturday.  One apartment said that they only have appointments Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm.  This sounds ridiculous.  How do people with jobs ever go see them?
I left my place around 1:30pm, and thought that I'd get to this inconvenient apartment office between 4:30pm and 5pm.  Okay, I left my favorite bagel place at 1:30pm, after getting a peanut butter smoothie and a large coffee.  Then I got suck i n LA traffic.  My bladder was bursting before I even got out of LA county!!  Seriously, it hurt.  So when I thought that I was sorta free of the city (Burbank, may be?), I took an exit.  There was an incredibly long line turning right, so I turned left.  But I went MILES without seeing a gas station.  There were only parks and a golf course.  My bladder hurts!  So I turned around, and found a gas station one block past the freeway; I  should've stayed in that right turn lane.  Sigh.

I was still hoping to catch the apartment manager, but I got to the place around 5:30pm.  I drove around to see what it was like.  That's when I understood why  it was $100 less than other apartments.  It was set up like a barracks.  There were creepy people loitering.  It only had those crappy window unit air conditioners.  And no one was in the pool.  It was 97 degrees, and no one was in the pool?  What's up with that?

That's when I came to a huge realization for me.  I don't have to rent the lowest priced apartment with a pool.  My new salary will be the same as I'm making now, and apartments in my new city are what I'm paying now.  For a two-bedroom, I can pay what I paid for my last one-bedroom!  This is the first time this has every happened to me.
Don't get me wrong, I want something that I still have money to pay off my student loan.  But it's quite a nice thought to know that I can get what I consider a super-fancy apartment, even a two-bedroom, and still pay less than I was paying a two years ago!  When I was making slightly less money, even.
It'll be quite a challenge for me to decide what level of luxury I "deserve."