The new and more "chulo" neighborhood

Yesterday I had the enviable task of moving mine and my two rommates' things from our old apartment to our new one, at Carrer Mozart, 20, in the Gracia neighborhood of Barcelona. Where the old neighborhood was part of the well-planned, wide-streeted Eixample area, Gracia is a web of narrow streets and plazas filled with a young crowd of bar-going, cafe-frequenting, music-playing locals. Magda, my art history teacher, called the area "muy chulo" which basically translates to "cool".

Just as I arrived, I already ran into people going in and out of my building that seemed far more promising than the over-60 crowd of our old place. Good thing they were there, because I had three huge suitcases, four bags of groceries, one laptop, a pile of clothes on hangers, and a box full of all the other crap I couldn't throw anywhere else. Two Polish girls helped me carry the stuff up the three flights of narrow stairs.

The apartment itself is great. The bathroom has a huge tub, and the kitchen came complete with a microwave and a dishwasher. Two of the bedrooms have no windows and have double beds that basically fill each, and the third bedroom has a single bed, a wall of windows and its own bathroom.

Although there aren't six supermarkets within a stone's throw of the apartment, there are lots of little shops and after a little wandering I found a huge market with stalls selling fresh produce, meat and seafood. The commute to school (and the cooler sections of the old city) is significantly longer, about a 30 minute walk, but hopefully we find lots of fun bars around here that make walking to the Born and Bari Gotic areas less important.