After the 6 1/2 hour flight from Bogota to Buenos Aires, arriving at a lovely 3:30 am in the morning, after a lot of choppy weather, I was ready to hit a soft mattress and get some sleepy. However, I had yet to find that mattress. I tried AirBnB to get a crash pad for a 5 am early check-in but no bueno. So I went to the hotel where we are scheduled to stay the NEXT few nights with my amigos. They’d have a room for uno, correct?
I had gambled that one of my Air BnB requests would have been accepted, so I could arrive at around 5 am and crash, however no bueno. So I exchanged some dollars into pesos, at the 8.4 official rate and went to hire a taxi. There was one official taxi booth who took the nonnegotiable $400P and then I asked to go to the Park Tower, where my pals and I would be staying the next day. Only I come to find out, just at this momento, there are 3 Park Tower properties and, obviously groggy yet determined to find el softy mattress, the taxi did eventually manage to get me to the correct tower. Except they were full.
Even though the web said they had rooms available. Ahh, I was still “officially in yesterday” and I was looking for a room for “tomorrow.” Those weird hours where it’s technically today but yesterday in hotel time. Sophie, the 5 am front desk attendant was super helpful and called around to get me another room nearby. Several calls and one more taxi ride later, I was nestled in like a bug in a rug as dad used to say. Dreaming of my final day alone. Traveling alone, for me is fabulous. See I host world-class weddings and parties, several a week, at my venue NOVA 535 in downtown St. Pete, Florida. I get my fill of parties, people, conversations, stress. Time alone for me is how I recharge. And today is my final day of true relax relax. A shower later, Sueno comes….
Refreshed and ready for day uno, the friendly and helpful front desk of the Sofitel Hotel Buenos Aires directed me, via an old school paper map, where the graffiti neighborhoods are plus a nice recommendation for lunch. Which was a locally famous steak house. I headed out, smiling and ready for a nice adventure. Not before swinging by the bar, no not for that, to grab a coffee you dork. For some odd reason the hotel restaurant is closed from 11 am to noon, odd to me, but I don’t run a hotel in BA. Exiting the hotel, letting my feet do the walking. Rounding my 2nd neighborhood block, I found a lady selling fresh fruits, and a few pesos were exchanged for strawberries, blueberries and cherries. Though it had been almost 24 hours since my last real meal, I wasn’t thinking steak. And I love steak. So I kept moving on until I noticed Farinelli, a great looking Italian cafe, bustling with life and those primal smells. Notice the prevalence of gorgeous purple flowers for the blooming Jacaranda trees that are everywhere in BA. My grandmother Clark had those in her neighborhood, good times when I was el nino. Raking those purple leaves, making the mounds of pine needles so gorgeous! An Entrepreneur from an early age, I found that sweat, gumption and a rake could earn the $$ that gave a kid so many options.
I’ve been told by my amigo and fellow Entrepreneur Drew Edwards, that an Argentinian is “An Italian person who speaks Spanish acts like they are French and wants to be English”, so then logically Farinelli’s Cafe should be an excellent choice. Most everything was some kind of pastry, and me working hard to be as Gluten Free as possible, I decided to take my chances. Read Grain Brain to learn about the possible dangers of glutens. I gave them up and my lifelong Psoriasis went bye-bye. Lucky 7s landed me with a potato salmon cake plus broccoli patty, the later unable to make this photoshoot as my stomach overroad my business blogging brain, oh well. Those plus two small coffees and mmmm, I was leaving my first 5 star review here in Buenos Aires.
Refreshed, I was now ready to explore the street art, the graffiti, wall murals, whatever you call it here in Buenos Argentina. After enjoying the incredible street art in Medellin and the sad yet encouraging mix of vandalism plus gorgeous graffiti in Bogota, I’m amped to see what Argentina has to offer. What I wasn’t ready for was that, here, you better watch your step. Literally. Think Paris until about 2005, when animals pooped everywhere and no one, I mean no one gave a merde. Well here you better watch where you’re going or it’ll be sole cleaning and soul searching time when you are cursing your missteps. Sidewalks are really bad here too, broken, uneven, dangerous, though better than Colombia. So delicious food, cool street art, and piles of trash and dog poopie everywhere, so far. Maybe someone should cry for you, Argentina!
The area where I found the most street art was in Palermo, which is broken into Hollywood and SOHO. Funny enough, they shoot a lot of TV and films here, maybe that’s why it’s named Hollywood. Maybe not? What I do know is that there are a ton of great restaurants and shops, cafes and a good looking bustling crowd of locals and touristos. In my next blog, you’ll meet my amigos and our dining, exploring, art enjoying, real estate and Entrepreneurial business plans and partying adventures. Today, you’re stuck with just me, capturing the beauty and the beast of day one here in Buenos Aires. Today was a good day.
Mucho footsteps, kilometers of calles, alleys and edificios later, I return to the Sofitel to get refreshed and ready for dinner and some more business. Yes I keep working every day, luckily I’ve been spending an enormous amount of productive time with some incredibly talented people, including Nick Mazeika, business consultant and Chris Jenkins, Web Master, the last several years we’ve been building a cloud based system, called My NOVA Event, to run NOVA 535 from anywhere. Without a system, as Nick is famous for saying, you’ve got nothing. After mentioning the title of this post to Drew, he say’s I could have called it the “poo-poo tango.” One more thing I’m sure of, is that thanks to Chris Jenkins for forcing us all to live and breath “Great UI”, UI = User Interface. We try to make the guests / customers experience a smooth, easy, pleasant and intuitive. You can too if you, like we do, believe in continuous improvement. Make every day better, always reaching for excellence. Someday the dog walkers of BA will, reach for their pooper scoopers too.
So are you creative? Entrepreneurial? A business owner or start-up? A success already and you want to enjoy the energy of like-minded people while mentoring them? Then connect with the Entrepreneur Social Club, in person every Thursday at NOVA 535 Unique Event Space in downtown St. Pete, Florida, or online here. The ESC is where we have an incredibly fun time while solving real problems, where we exclude religion and politics, while focusing on helping, connecting and enjoying our fellow Entrepreneurs and business owners. Why? Because if we don’t save our species, no one will. And I think we’re worth saving, don’t you? Then Join us!
