Moving to Malasaña

Our week's lease ended today, and so we moved to our new flat in a different neighborhood.  We picked the "Cervantes Apartment", in a artsy bohemian neighborhood called Malasaña. 

The flat has two lofts, accessible by ladders, which thrilled the kids, as they each laid claim to their own private space.

The biggest change in venues is the neighborhood.  Malasaña is comparable to the East Village in New York (so I'm told), with lots of small, designer clothes stores, avant-garde eateries, and a sizable gay population.  The streets are very narrow, and inhospitable to cars, so the streets are pedestrian friendly 95% of the time, except for the occasional taxi or motor scooter.  And since this is an older part of town, many of the intersections are at angles other than 90 degrees.  In spite of a lot of graffiti (including on our front door), it's a really charming area.

Our first adventure was to find lunch. We settled on this charming little bakery, where Bryce got a delicious slice of stuffed pizza, and the rest of us got empanadas. They were top-notch, comparable or better than anything we might find in SF. 

Exploring further, the area is full of really cool looking eateries, including a couple of sushi places, several burger joints (Laurel loves hamburgers), take out pizza places, traditional Spanish fare, and more.

After lunch, the kids needed to chill, so Sue and I went exploring Fuencarril, a trendy street in our area.  Most of the shops are clothes stores, and we realized how un-hip we are as we walked through a few of them. (Hopefully that will change the longer we are here.)  I encouraged Sue to take Laurel and Bryce shopping later on this week, since our kids can more easily pull off being fashionistas. Having been freed from wearing a school uniform for the rest of the year, I can see Laurel is already evolving her look, so it will be interesting to see how she transforms.

That night, we chose an Italian outdoor restaurant for dinner, and the food was superb.  The kids had some amazing pasta dishes - Laurel's bolognese sauce was some of the best I ever ate.  Since we're close to Italy, you would expect good Italian food, but the style was definitely different than San Francisco (which also has great Italian food).