Pavement

Boy are my feet tired!

The past few days, my feet have been hard at work trying to figure out how and where I should live while I am here in Buenos Aires. I started out in the dumpy but ok Hotel Los Robles in San Telmo. After a couple of days and nights there, I decided it wasn´t really my barrio. I think it´s a cute little neighborhood, but it doesn´t have the feel or the social aspects I´m looking for. Also, there is something about being in a little hotel like this that feels a little bit confining. The staff must let me both in and out of the building. One day I left without my ibuprofen. My ankle has been sore so I need it especially with all the walking every day. I felt guilty about going back and asking the eighty or so year old guy to get up and let me in and out again. So I bought some more at the store. This type of thing has happened a few times. I like to come and go as I please. I don´t like waking up the guy at 3am to let me in after I return from a club.

But more important than that, you don´t meet anyone in a hotel. In backpacker hostels and beach bungalows, you tend to meet many of the folks that come through. And now I am really in need of some quick friends. So this place just wasn´t working.

So, on a tip from my good friends Shannon and Kathleen who were here a few years ago, I decided to check out the HI Recoleta Hostel in barrio Recoleta. I figured if I stay there a couple of nights, I can meet some folks and then take it from there. Right? Well not really.

I got a room there for only $5 less per night than my private room. This place is equally run down but now I share a bedroom with three other guys. One older guy from Denmark that goes to bed around 8 pm. And two Argentinian business men using the place as a cheap hotel. They are all nice folks, but not exactly partners in crime.

The bathroom is shared by eight of us, and after dealing with a crazy wet floor (no shower curtain) one morning and realizing that Recoleta isn´t really my speed either, I decided to head to Palermo to see what I can find at any level from hostel to apartment.

As it turns out, there isn´t really much in the way of hostels or hotels in Palermo either. The web listing I found turned out to be largely out of date, and many of the listings I found were either no longer there or they had been upgraded to more expensive options.

So what I settled on was to rent an apartment. This is actually quite normal here for short term visitors. The rates are cheaper the longer you stay. But I figured that, by getting a place for a couple of weeks, I would pay only a little more than the original cheap hotel, come and go as I please, have a kitchen and other amenities, and have a much much nicer place. So I contacted a realtor and I expect to have a place locked up in Barrio Palermo Soho by tomorrow.

Now I´m excited. But boy are my feet tired.