(Alert: long read)
This apartment was cute and served our purposes well. The kitchen table was a great workspace, and also had room to have a couple of friends over for dinner. The living room had space for me to do my yoga, and also to hang out. The queen-size bed was pretty comfortable. There was plenty of space to put our stuff in the closet, but not our large suitcase; it had to live in the corner of the living room.
There were a few drawbacks. This place has limited fresh air access, including nowhere to hang any hand washing to dry. The window in the kitchen lets in nice fresh air, until the neighbor starts smoking. The living room window also lets in fresh air, but looks out on another neighbor’s patio. This significantly limited our ability to open the window more and still have any privacy - the windows have a translucent coating on them to help with privacy, as long as you don’t open them much. We were here in the Spring, so the weather was not too hot, and we didn’t miss too much not opening the windows widely.
The patio neighbor has his barbecue right outside the bedroom window. Again, due to the time of year we were here, luckily he did not use his barbecue.
We had a few issues that our host, Victoria, took care of quickly at the beginning of our stay. We were disappointed to need some basics so quickly, but she did take care of them promptly.
We have stayed in other places here in B.A. that included a weekly cleaning, but we were on our own here. The gal Victoria uses did not reply promptly to our messages so we found someone else. This was a bit of a hassle (although not a big money cost, just very inconvenient).
The internet worked well for my Zoom work meetings, but not for streaming anything on the TV. The floor in the bedroom is uneven due to water damage to the floor, so be careful. Minimal instructions came with the place - we figured out to take the trash outside to public receptacles (we were not told of anywhere in the building to take trash).
The bidet is one of the best things about traveling outside the U.S. This one worked just OK, after a lot of fiddling around with the faucets and getting almost scalded a couple of times (and accidentally face-sprayed many times).
Back to some positives: we came here to do some remote work and of course also to enjoy Buenos Aires, which is one of our favorite places on Earth. The work went well (as mentioned with good internet speed for Zoom), and this apartment is set back from the street, making it quieter than many places that look out onto the street.
The neighborhood is just fantastic. You can enjoy a myriad of awesome coffee shops and restaurants, or you can get anywhere in the city on the dozens of bus lines that pass nearby. It’s about a 6 blocks walk to the subway, which I love because it is faster than the bus. This Palermo neighborhood also has a gym, multiple salons, multiple laundry places, great shops, and great bakeries, all within 2 or 3 blocks.
For our next trip to Buenos Aires, we will most likely stay in the same neighborhood, but we’ll try to find a unit in which the owners pay more attention to detail and take more pride in the details of their unit.