Buenos Aires | Eight Days, Four Hotels | Recoleta

Buenos Aires | Eight Days, Four Hotels | Recoleta

I love staying in hotels, but even I will admit that four in eight days, in one location, is a bit excessive. . . but what a way to get to know the diverse and fabulous Buenos Aires and its surroundings.

My first stop was Hotel Mio Buenos Aires, in the chic neighborhood of Recoleta. When you hear people call Buenos Aires “the Paris of South America”, they’re referring to Recoleta. It really does look, and feel, like Paris.

The Mio is a new hotel on the fashionable Avenida Quintana. The door into the hotel is so large, they have a guy standing there to open it. (Seriously I could not open that door.) It’s made of French oak from wine barrels, a nod to the wine-producing owners, the Catenas.

The lobby is a stark contrast to the old world architecture of the neighborhood. The vast open space, gleaming surfaces, and contemporary furnishings are sleek and sophisticated.

The doors into the guest rooms are made of the same wine barrel oak as the main door into the hotel. (On a much smaller scale.) The walls are polished concrete that looks, and feels, like Venetian plaster, and the floors and cabinetry are a rich, dark wood.

The “open plan” bathroom is a step up, on a platform of glossy marble, and, in the center, in front of a floor to ceiling window, is the pièce de résistance . . . a bathtub carved by hand out of a tree.

Mario Dasso, an Argentinian artist, searches out and carves fallen caldén trees in the mountains of Argentina, creating these incredible, one-of-a-kind bathtubs. Here’s a link to a video showing how he does it. I found it mesmerizing.

Mio bathtubs

The room was also equipped with . . . wait for it . . . a champagne dispenser. Yes, you heard me, there’s a champagne dispenser, ready to fill a glass with bubbly whenever you please.

I’ll drink to that.

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