Leaving the US

Friday, Jan 4 – Day 16

My flight left Houston last night around 9:00 pm and arrived in Buenos Aires at 11:20 am local time – I think. That’s the time the flight crew announced, but the clocks in the airport said it was an hour later. I’m not sure how long the flight was, but it turns out that BA is only four hours in front of Houston, 6 hours in front of California. Thankfully, the flight was uneventful.

I’ve got a hotel for the night because my apartment won’t be ready until tomorrow. At this point, I’m just happy to be out of Houston, and am looking forward to going to bed early. It had been such a long time since I’d been to Houston, and I’ve got so many really good friends there, that every night seemed to be an occasion to have a party.

Anyway, I did get to walk around town a little and began to get my bearings. I found my apartment building (first photo) and the school, and walked Av Florida, which is a pedestrian shopping area in between the two. I’m in an area called the Micro Centro, which is essentially downtown. I picked this area because 1) it looked like it was pretty convenient to the school I’ll be attending every day – 8 to 10 blocks, 2) it’s only one block from a Subte station (the subway, it’s actually short for subteranio) that connects to all 5 lines, 3) the on-line pictures I saw of the apartment’s interior looked pretty good, and 4) the price was about $500 to $800 cheaper than the apartments in Recoleta and Palermo (nicer neighborhoods, but further away and without access to the Subte).

The city of Buenos Aires is almost 500 years old, and has somewhere between 12 and 14 million people. One third of the entire population of Argentina lives here. It’s very dense, but not too vertical. Much like Paris or DC, the entire area is covered by 10 to 15 story buildings, and it goes on for miles, and miles, and miles. There are a lot of new buildings with contemporary architecture – one new 100 ksf office tower just sold for over $1,000 psf, and there are a lot of stunningly beautiful neo-classical buildings. Most of everything else, however, is pretty crumbly and looks crap.

This pretty well describes my neighborhood. Ha!