Kyle Hepp

May 19, 2011

As you all know, we were in Argentina last week for Andi and Lucas’ amazing Buenos Aires destination wedding. And like I already mentioned, we spent the week running around the city like crazy people.  SO, I was really, REALLY happy that we got to stay at such an awesome hotel, because it ended up being the perfect home base.

We spent all five days of our stay at the Moreno Hotel. It’s a boutique hotel, right near the Casa Rosada (Argentina’s equivalent of the White House). That’s the first advantage of the hotel. It’s right in the thick of things in the San Telmo neighborhood. The most incredible thing is that inspire of it’s central location on a busy street, our room was not noisy at all. I’m a horrendously light sleeper and I absolutely hate when you can hear street noise from hotel rooms, or elevator noise. But Moreno is an old art-deco style building, and they’ve conserved a lot of the original architecture and to get to your room you have to actual open a door that leads to another hallway, meaning at night when that door is closed, it blocks most of the elevator noise too.

And that brings me to my favorite thing about the hotel — the design. It’s SO cool that they’ve restored this incredible old building and have kept so much of it’s charm. Even the elevators are the originals (on the outside, the mechanics are brand new).

There’s a guard 24/7 in this hallway, who was so helpful to us with everything — directions, recommendations for restaurants, etc. The front desk/lobby area is actually on the second floor, so most days we didn’t speak to anyone else on the staff because we’d take the elevator straight down to the first.

I ADORE the stained glass windows by the stairways on every floor. So beautiful.

See? Antique elevators. Aren’t they so cool?

This was the view from our window. I posted this photo yesterday, but it was so nice to wake up to this every day that I thought I’d post it again and reminisce a little bit

This is the main lobby — a very eclectic mix of antique + modern — the kind of decorating style that I was I knew how to pull off! I’m going to call Moreno to come decorate our apartment if we ever finish it

I kind of wanted to steal this painting right off the wall!

Seba and Emily and Rodolfo and I used the lobby as a meeting place one night.

The hotel sent up a complimentary bottle of Malbec! When it arrived I was so happy — even though I don’t drink red wine. Seriously, that’s some smart customer service right there. The bottle of wine probably cost them 10 dollars max, but it certainly left a great impression on me!

The rooftop patio was lovely. I took a nap on one of the couches one day

While the decor of the all the public spaces conserved the antique look, the rooms were super modern and simple, which is pretty much my favorite style in the world! I can’t wait to own an apartment, paint it white, and put nothing in it. I’m serious

The concept of the Moreno Hotel is that it offers “no frills deluxe” accommodations. The idea is that the rooms don’t have additional and unnecessary accessories, the hotel can’t be categorized by the star ratings (five star hotel, four star hotel, etc.), and that by taking away everything that isn’t vital for a comfortable stay, they can offer a reasonable price for an extremely comfortable hotel room. See the shower back there with glass on one side and wood on the floor? That’s we want to do in our apartment, except with two shower heads side by side.

Our room was super spacious and bright. Also vital when you stay at hotels a lot. So many of them are dark and gloomy.

There was a nice little couch/sitting area and then a desk, so both of us could work comfortably without having to be in bed with our computers on our laps.

I could live in this room. There was a little mini kitchen sink/fridge area not pictured here. So really, you could live here, I’m not messing around.

To make a long story short, I loved this hotel. It has so much personality and the rooms were SO comfortable. Their idea of taking away all the unnecessary crap is genius. I don’t need a mini bar. I usually don’t need an ironing board. I don’t need ten thousand towels. All I need to be comfortable is a little space and a little free internet. The Moreno was awesome, the prices are also totally reasonable, so if you’re ever in Buenos Aires, you should DEFINITELY stay there. This is my fifth time in the city and I’ve always stayed in hotels around the same price range, but this is by far the nicest one of them all.

Disclaimer: According to the FTC rules I have to tell you that the Moreno sponsored our hotel stay. However, please note — I am not being forced to blog about this and I wouldn’t say any of it if it weren’t true.