An Apartment

As Jake mentioned, yesterday we moved into our new apartment. We compromised on design and an outdoor space in favor of location and services. The apartment is in a 5 story building a block from Plaza Espana, one of the 4 smaller plazas surrounding Plaza Independencia. It is not especially remarkable, but has a dining/sitting area, a bedroom, a rather large bathroom and a tiny kitchen with a 2 burner stove, microwave, small refrigerator and sink. There are 2 large windows that look onto the walls of surrounding buildings, but you can see sky if you look up and the rooms are fairly well lit. The advantage of the building is that is has WiFi, someone cleans and makes the bed every day, does laundry once a week, and there is a doorman. It took us about 2 1/2 days to find a place. Our first day here was spent discovering how to locate furnished short-term apartments and the next two days looking at apartments. The tourist office had a convenient list of buildings with furnished apartments. I learned how to use the "locutorios", phone booths in stores, to call about places, and Intercultural, the language school we will be attending, actually would have been the best resource had we started with them.

Plaza life is great - as it grows dark and cooler the plazas fill with people. Plaza Independencia has lots of craft booths and snack vendors. There are entertainers as well. Usually a children's show of some sort and a couple people dressed as statues that move when coins are forthcoming. One corner has tango music, but we've yet to catch anyone dancing. Plaza San Martin has skateboarders doing tricks along the stairs and walkways. Our plaza has beautiful tilework and a fountain and seems to be one of the more peaceful plazas. Plaza Chile is under reconstruction this summer. We haven't spent much time yet around Plaza Italia.

There is a medium sized grocery store a block and a half from our apartment. We bought cereal (much missed the last week) for breakfast and frozen raviolis for dinner. We also got some green beans from a vegetable stand. We cooked up the ravioli with some sauce and boiled the green beans for a wonderful meal. I picked out a Malbec wine from the grocery from Vina Maipu. We both agreed that is was okay but not great. We'll try again though!