We’re finally in an apartment in Buenos Aires that we REALLY like.
But up until now, we have been having some big issues with our Buenos Aires Apartments. We went through a real estate agent who is from Buenos Aires and is based out of Florida.
We told her that we wanted a nice place that was quiet (and obviously clean, if we were going to be paying $1400 or $1500/month for the time we were here).
The apartment we originally had reserved, we got talked out of and got talked into this one. We saw that it was on a busy street, so we asked (before confirming our reservation) if it would be noisy. The real estate agent confirmed that it would not be noisy.
When we got to the apartment, it was both noisy and dirty.

So noisy, in fact, that on the first night, Carrie only slept about 2 hours, and I didn’t sleep at all. Literally.
So I got up and made a couple of videos to show the real estate agent why we needed to move.
The dirt:

The noise:

And pictures…
Loud and dirty apartment in Godoy Cruz, Palermo, Buenos Aires
Thanks so much to Emily (Emily, you rock!) who let us crash at her apartment for three nights while her brother was in Paraguay (somewhere we’ll probably also visit).
So, we complained loudly, but didn’t get moved for four days, because we arrived at the apartment the night before Easter, and then Monday was also a holiday, so it was Wednesday before we moved into a different place.
And to the credit of the real estate agent, they did find us two nice apartments. (Although one had a very basement-like feeling about it, and we swept up 5 cockroaches when we moved in. But they were dead when we moved in, so that at least made us feel a little better.) We moved to that one from Wednesday-Saturday morning, and have been in the second apartment last night and tonight. Pictures of it will be coming soon, but it’s very nice, and we’re enjoying it a lot! Feels like we’re finally able to settle in here for the rest of the time we’ll be here.
In the midst of the apartment stuff, we also greeted our first visitors who are going to be staying with us during our time here.
Kevin Gianni and Annmarie Gianni have been friends of ours for about a year and a half now. Kevin and I actually “met” because they have a whole bunch of great health information online and I called him in November of 2006 to chat about his book… and then we started talking, and he invited me to work on a project with him in March of 2007, and they came to our wedding, and our friendship has been building from there.
Prior to yesterday, most of our time had been occupied with apartment hunting, and dealing with the apartment stuff. Other than eating at quite a few great restaurants at prices that are 2/3-3/4 the cost of what similar food would cost in the US… here’s what we have been up to since finally getting moved into our home away from home yesterday.
(Since this has already gotten a bit long, I’ll do this in another post – but we have now seen the Casa Rosada (Where Madonna played Eva Peron, in Evita, singing to the crowds), and had Gelato at (reportedly) the best Gelato shop in Buenos Aires.)
I’ll just conclude this by saying that the challenges with the apartment have taught us A LOT about ourselves and about our desire and ability to travel to (and in) other countries, and I’ll talk more about that at some point in the future.
Thank you for following along as we explore Buenos Aires, Argentina!!