¡Vamos a España!

Well, we signed the contract on the flat in Barcelona yesterday. We weren't able to send the reserve payment due to security restrictions with the web and mobile app: I didn't have my one-time password card for our Spanish bank account here in Peru, so that'll wait until we return home tomorrow.

Our folks at Address.Properties and the project's architect have been vary patient and helpful as we've been ironing out the details. The floor isn't built yet, so we've changed the layout of the flat, and will be heavily customizing the kitchen (big surprise there!).

Which reminds me, I owe them some diagrams showing where we want the radiators so they don't interfere with our planned furniture layout. Something like this:

The windows on the left side look out directly over the marvelous Mercat de Sant Antoni and over the city to Montjuïc.  The ones on the right open to a meter-deep balcony looking into the interior of the block.  The stairway in the center will go to the private roof deck, and stairs and new elevator go down to the lobby. We expect the flat to be finished late Summer 2016.

Sadly, we're still working-class stiffs so can't just pick up and move to Spain. We expect we'll have to rent it out for a few years before we move permanently.  We hoping to rent it out for about a year at a time and spend a month there each year until that time. Barcelona's stopped issuing permits for short-term "tourist" rentals, in an effort to prevent tourists overrunning the city, so the minimum rental period we could offer would be a month. We'd prefer long-term renters to hen-nights and party-hardy folks anyway.

OMG, A Roof Terrace!

Last time we wrote about an unbuilt apartment we were seriously interested in -- until we found out we couldn't have a walk-out terrace.

We were about ready to storm out of the meeting when the project's architect said something about a roof terrace. He was speaking Spanish, but I could swear he said it was a "terrassa privada" -- a private terrace.  What??!!  Our agent didn't even know about this!

He pulled out his architecture drawings and showed us the roof plan. The entire thing was going to be a roof terrace.  And it was going to be split in half, for use by the two top-floor (atico) owners. For private use by them. None of the owners of the apartments on the other floors would have access.

OK, not the entire roof. There would be a central core where the elevator and stairs and light well comes up, naturally. And around this would be an area reserved for technical equipment -- the air conditioner compressors for the apartments, etc. Here's our portion:

OMG, it's big. The diagram shows 87.9 square meters, almost 950 square feet. That's about as big as one of the floors in our existing house.

We started laying it out with our design software. Some planters around the technical equipment, plenty of outdoor dining space, a hot tub (!), more chairs, a video projector, a barbecue (which I gather is not legal in Barcelona but we saw stores selling Weber kettles and charcoal).  There's plenty of room. Below, the left side looks out to Mercat de Sant Antoni and then on to Montjuïc; the right looks into the interior of the block which is filled with courtyards and decks; top and bottom edges are neighboring buildings.

We have to walk up the central staircase to get to the roof terrace, and that's something we were hoping to avoid because we're not getting any younger. I mean, we've got another 10 or 20 years probably before this would become a problem.  But I did ask the builders if they could talk to the other penthouse owner to see if they'd be willing to split the cost of extending the elevator up to the roof -- not cheap, but a lot easier for schlepping up provisions for a big dinner party.

Our agents said if that wasn't possible, we could build our own private elevator from our flat to the roof, once the construction was done.  I think this is probably not so uncommon, since so many old buildings there have been retrofitted with elevators in small spaces.

From the current roof, we've got a decent view over the market, Montjuïc and the city.  We're hoping that with when our new floor  is added we might be high enough to get a glimpse of the Mediterranean as the building faces the direction of the port. We're not optimistic, but it'd be pretty cool.

House hunting?

We met with a real estate agent from Lucas Fox whose postings I'd seen online; they have some really upscale properties. It's a long shot, but could we afford a vacation place here? perhaps one that we could rent out when we're not here? Like the waiter says when they bring the dessert menu, "it doesn't cost anything to look." Unsurprisingly, Lucas Fox was located in a swanky neighborhood with ornate buildings like this one; look at that ornamentation!  I'm a modern kinda guy, but I do appreciate the detail.

We like the location we're staying, in the old city. It's a bit gritty, it's a bit funky, and we like that more than poodle boutiques and tea salons.  From the back of our flat there's a weird construction that looks like maybe they extended the interiors of the buildings into central courtyards during a real estate boom, then stopped.

Other views from the back show the cacophony of urban life, and a wildly shaped space alien antenna thing on the horizon.

Futher east is Montjuïc

There are cable cars that leave from Barcelonetta waterfront to the peak.

When we returned from the agent, we took a long look at the construction site up the block from our flat. Would the construction they're doing here be a modern building, right on the Raval, that we could buy into at a pre-construction price?

Nope, Irene checked it out, and it's gonna be a hotel. Tea salons coming soon, I can see it.

Oh well. Time for lunch on pleasant rooftop.  Irene fried up onions, red pepper, endive from the market, with some Spanish olive oil and Jerez vinegar, some tolerable bread and really good olives from the market.

 Later, a simple snack of figs and Pyrenean goat cheese, also from Sant Antoni's.

I had to slave over a hot computer all day, but fortunately was able to work on the rooftop as the temperatures dropped. Finally, after dark, I rustled up a simple Escabeche De Bacalao. We'd gotten bacalao yesterday from the fish monger at Sant Antoni and they instructed us how often we'd need to change the water to rehydrate and desalinate it properly for serving tonight.  I mixed it up with some funny acorn-shaped cherry tomatoes with a super sweet taste, bulbing onions, briny black olives, orange supremes, and doused it with some more of that great local oil and vinegar.  We're eating on Spanish time, about 10pm, so it's hard to get decent light to photograph this. But it sure tastes good, fresh direct flavors and vibrant textures.

We washed it down with some local wine Irene got from Celler de Ronda, the same place we hit our first day. These two were dispensed from giant wooden casks into plastic 2 Liter plastic flagons for take-away. Irene's choices today were a Penedes white and a local red; total price? €6.70 for 4 Liters of wine, including the deposit on the flagons.

No, it's not Château d'Yquem but it's eminently drinkable. The world needs more affordable wine, an alternative the the cultist/elitist special occasion stuff.

As we wrap up another day, it's well after midnight. We can hear the waitstaff putting away the chairs and tables on the Raval -- apparently the law says they have to come off by midnight, but the bars stay open much later. We can smell the aromas of cooking: garlic, onions, beef, bread, fried food. Last night when we came home around 2am, there was a traffic jam of taxi drivers and late-nighters hitting the kabob places that were doing a roaring business. It's great to be in such a food-loving town.