Fabio & I recently moved… yea! We had been looking for a new apartment a couple weeks prior to the Uruguay trip & found a place we liked in Barrio Norte. That’s a psuedo-neighborhood that has no official boundaries, but everyone knows it straddles Recoleta and Retiro. All in all, a nice part of town with great connections everywhere.
We moved because the previous apartment turned out to be too small & noisy beyond belief. Photos can’t show how it was impossible to sleep with buses passing every few minutes. The building had 15 floors & an average of six apartments per floor —which means living there was very impersonal & full of nasty old ladies that shut the door in your face… plus a doorman with the IQ of a brussel sprout. Even though super small (around 120 square feet), the place seemed hard to keep clean. But that’s all in the past now. Good riddance! [More detail about that living experience can be found in this post from 2020.]
The new apartment is twice the size of the previous one with 85 square meters. Facing the interior of the block (contrafrente in local jargon), we see only buildings, trees & sky —very different from the street corner view we had previously. And although it’s a very busy block with lots of traffic, not being on the street means we hear nothing. What a relief. Who says there are no advantages to building with concrete? Our new rent is $890 per month, or U$S 250, including building expenses, taxes & water. Best of all, the apartment came furnished. Not my style but it has style —that’s more than I can say for the other place— and we both like it. We’re both very comfortable here.
Only a week after moving in, my mom came to visit… quite a trip since she had never left the country before & picked Argentina as her first foreign visit! She stayed for a week, we saw a few sights & ate a lot. Below are photos from the Casa Rosada museum, Recoleta Cemetery, the obelisco, a parilla where we ate one night & a couple of us all.
[Originally posted in Argentina Experienced, a website I created to document living in Buenos Aires after the 2001 economic crisis. Text has been edited for style. Definitions of econ terms can be found in the glossary. Politician biographies may help, as well as a summary of recent history & current events.]