Yes, we’re looking for a new apartment. A new place to hang our hats. If we wore hats. Well, I do. But only when I don’t want to brush my hair. Usually baseball caps. Jan doesn’t really wear hats. OK, sometimes. But hardly ever.

The problem is we don’t want to leave where we are. We love the neighborhood, the gigantic terrace, the view, and the intimacy. Well, maybe not the intimacy. I guess the intimacy is why we’re looking for a new place to live. We need more space!

Our current flat – for those of you who have never come to visit (shame on you) – is a paltry 35 m². There’s only one bedroom and we have a combined living room, dining room, and office. And then there’s the bathroom. Oy gavalt, the bathroom! Our bathroom is so small that the toilet had to be installed diagonally so the person sitting on it wouldn’t bash their knees against the opposite wall. Did I mention that we’re on the sixth floor and there’s no elevator? We gotta move.

And so we started looking. Have you looked recently? Have you seen the prices of flats here in Barcelona? It’s obscene! And not just any old obscene. I’m talking “goatse” obscene here. We’ve had a pretty sweet deal for the past three years so we’ve actually managed to save a little something for a rainy day. That should come in handy. More than handy, to pay for the three bedrooms, elevator, and sunny front room that we want, that nest egg will be absolutely necessary.

In the past two weeks, I’ve already gone to visit about 14 different apartments. They all sounded good on paper, but once we got there, it was either in a dodgy part of town, had no windows, no joi de vivre, or was obviously designed during that outrageous and psychedelic period known as the swinging sixties. And so we said to ourselves, “Selves, we’re not in any rush to move so there’s no need to settle for something that we’re not 100% convinced of. We’ve got plenty of time.” Until today.

Today we went to visit a flat over on the other side of Gracia (our favorite neighborhood of Barcelona). It was spacious, clean, had parquet floors, central heating, three bedrooms, a decent size balcony, was within our price range, and it had an elevator. So right after relegating ourselves to another two months of tranquil apartment hunting, along comes this contender on which we probably have to decide within the next couple days! The place isn’t perfect: one of the bedrooms is kinda small, the kitchen could use some work, Jan may not have any direct sunlight to tan herself with, and the elementary school across the street may prove to be a bit noisy when attempting to take a mid-day siesta. After all of the searching we’ve done over the past couple of weeks, we haven’t seen anything this good for this price. But you never know what will pop up tomorrow! We’ve gotta think this through pretty fast because there are always two or three real estate vultures hovering just above you looking for property carrion. It’s exciting and scary all at once.