Landed

I have a home!

Yesterday I got the keys to my very own Palermo Soho apartment. I am not sure why they call the barrio Soho except that it might resemble the New York City neighborhood with the same name. Palermo is a large area and so they have named smaller sections with more distinct names.

It is already such a different experience having a home rather than a hotel room or a hostel bed. I have a fridge! I have a bath tub! I have a key to the building! Amenities I might have at one time taken for granted are now super luxuries.

The first thing I did after settling in was to go to the grocery store to buy some food and supplies. The notion of cooking meals for myself has been off the table for quite some time. The store I found, however, was not exactly Safeway. It was a fairly small store that still billed itself as a "supermercado". I only had about ten items on my shopping list but I only managed to find about half. About 1/5 of the store is devoted to local wines (on my list), but they didn´t carry corkscrews, so I had to buy box wine (not too bad actually). They also didn´t have peanut butter, english muffins, or any microwave food. Should I be surprised about this?

So today, for the first time, I can just relax during the day, and not have to worry about finding addresses, hotel check out times, where to keep my bags, etc. Now I can get down to the business of feeling like a resident... or a tourist.. whichever I choose.

You´ll have to ask me again after I leave here, but at the moment, I really have to recommend the notion of using an agency to get an apartment here in Buenos Aires rather than a hotel. Unless you really want the things a hotel offers, like daily cleaning and...er.. what else is there?.. you can rent an apartment weekly for about half the daily rate of a comparable hotel room. It makes me wonder if there is a similar niche being filled back home in San Francisco. I met the owner of my place, Julián, when I got the keys. He seems like he has a good little business going. I know that when you buy a flat in SF and want to rent it out, the rent will likely not be enough to cover the mortgage payment. But could it cover the mortgage if it was rented short term?

Hmmm.