Living

Our first apartment was adorable for a minute. It was in San Telmo, one of the older parts of the city, and one that makes clear why this place is considered the Paris of South America. The buildings are tall and slim with ornate wooden doors, iron balconies and deco sculpture. An indoor market full of butchers, veggie stands and cheese men stood across the street, and San Telmo's famous weekend flea was only two blocks away.


It was a lovely place to begin -- deep in the belly of Argentine tradition and history, not to mention directly above a bakery (!) -- but the charm wore off steadily through the month. We lived on a busy bus route, and our balcony doors did little to muffle the whistles and squeaks of their air brakes. Our "quaint" (read: small) kitchen was prone to flooding and our hot water heater was less than reliable. There was construction going on above us 6 days a week, which meant our entire apartment was perpetually filthy, both from tracking dirt from the hallway and the little bits of ceiling that would fall from the hammering and drilling.

Perhaps the trickiest thing to deal with, however, was the layout. The apartment was a funny, somewhat linear deal. When you walked in, you were in the midst of the dining room and living room area. Around to the right was Liz's and my bedroom, which was an awkward extention of the living room and had only matchstick blinds to separate it from that common space. Now comes the thorny part: to get to the bathroom, the kitchen and Eriks's's's's bedroom, you had to walk through our bedroom. So between essentially living in a hallway and not even having four proper walls, our patience had really worn thin.

We only committed to a month there, so between doing our tourist walks and lounging in cafes, a solid two weeks of email after email to real estate agents and Craigslisters was spent in search of a new place to live.

Now we're in a funky little apartment on the top floor of a building on the border of Palermo Viejo/Soho. It has two actual bedrooms, (ours with a great view of the sunset,) a larger kitchen, a proper dining room and a loooovely patio that gets lots of sun to help Liz's newly planted herbs grow. It's also in an area that is much more clean, safe and quiet. It's actually very much like my own Capitol Hill, with small tree-lined streets everywhere. It's a totally walkable community, with the grocery store a 15 minute walk from our door, lots of shops and restaurants within minutes as well, and blessedly close to a Subte stop. I think we're all a lot more comfortable and content with this place. When my next Hill Rag column comes out, you can read about how I'm working to make it (and Buenos Aires) like home!

Ciao for now...