House-Hunting International

We need a place to live. We'd like to find a flat by the time we leave next week, because we'd find it ideal to move into our permanent home when we return in April with all our stuff. But this international house-hunting project is going to take some time.

I've been in a half dozen flats (pisos in local parlance, literally "floors") in the last few days. Amy has been in twice that many, since she's the advance guard of our house-hunting project. We've seen just about every combination of features in these places, but to date no one place has it all. The second-floor flat in the neighborhood known as La Latina has the perfect kitchen and great artwork, for example, but our charming agent Nadia neglected to tell us that the bedroom opens onto a plaza that's home to the local tavern's sleep-killing rowdy summer beer-garden. The fourth-floor flat with killer views and a rooftop terraza  is vastly short of storage space for big stuff like bicycles, and it's a half-hour walk or forty-minute bus ride from my office. So we're choosing to stay picky for a while, reserving judgment on the lot until we see more a few more places.

By the end of the week we'll choose from among the best. We're engaged in nesting behavior, really, searching for a comfortable and secure place from which to launch this next amazing stage of our lives. I'm confident that we'll do well, if only because we're so open to the possibilities of life in this great city.

-- Chris 

P.S. February 18th. We found it and negotiated an agreement. Stay tuned!