I was looking around for places in Buenos Aires, knowing nothing at all about the city as I headed there after some time in Cordoba. Consequently, I highly recommend Cordoba over Bs. As. on a first trip, or maybe any trip. The people are friendlier, the scenery is preferable, and I liked the environment afforded by being a college town with a lot of history (see Jesuits founded the now public university there). Still, you can’t go to Argentina without taking in Buenos Aires and so I naturally went myself having wanted to go since I first read Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Yes, of course Tango and Polo are great matters of attraction to the port city of Bs. As. but there are lots of reasons to go. As I prepared for the city, I searched for reviews and a list of favorite places in those reviews/guides. I found something written by an English woman with respectable travel experience; that is to say, she traveled to Bs. As. often enough to know a few things about where to stay. The posada was one of the places recommended for those into the boutique hotel scene and because I prefer such places, I had a shot at it, making arrangements via email and phone. I believe I also made car arrangements through the Posada so that I was met by a driver with a name sign at the airport, but I don’t recall exactly. The cost of arranging for a driver is worth it versus the stress of trying to figure things out on your own in an environment unknown to you. All kinds of things can go wrong, including cabbies that will demolish standard fares so I’d say best to go it alone after you know a place a bit more, get a driver. As I said though, I don’t recall if I made arrangements with my housing, but the driver was a swell guy and took me right where I was going, to La Posada. La Posada is run by a woman named Eli (eh-lee, not Ee-lie), who may also be the owner, and reservations are strictly arranged over the phone and through email although Eli curiously requested my credit card information toward booking the room when we spoke on the phone. The website for the location also states that paypal can be used to settle payments. I’m not sure how paypal works, and I’m not keen on it either way, but when I spoke with Eli on the second day there, as someone else received me and gave me keys, it was explained to me that credit cards are strictly not accepted, only “efectivo”/cash. This is slightly problematic for me as I have a governor on how much cash I can pull in a foreign country, on a per day basis, but still manageable considering my cost per day was 75 USD or approx. 325 pesos for a single room with my own bathroom.
First impressions of the posada upon entering were very good. It’s not new or refurbished by any means, but that’s not what I was expecting. Instead you walk in through a large, heavy wooden door to a short marble corridor with two-story high ceilings, typical of all the old residential structures in the San Telmo area. This leaves you at the base of winding marble steps, an entry unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I took my things up, was greeted by a woman at the top where I could see a sort of old family sitting room/dining/kitchen area off to the side of the stairs and then a hall lined with glass and wood doors that were clearly the different rooms running in the opposite direction. Above lining an all glass hallway roof I saw white, linen tarps hung in an attractive fashion and rigged with a retraction pulley system, something used to control sun intensity while letting through ample light on the often bright days. I was shown to my room and found the same two story high ceilings in the room as well as a ceiling fan that was doing a great job of circulating the warm January air, but no air conditioner present. I was shown the bathroom, the storage cabinet, and off on the side a small chair and table pairing with a fleur de lis capped glass bottle for water. I was pleased with it all, like going to stay with grandma at the house her late husband built in…1918. On the second day though, the lack of privacy (I was in a rush and easily walked in on a partially nude couple in the room next to mine when I mistook their door for mine), the fact that my water wasn’t refilled on a daily basis, and the discovery of ants, and I mean lots of ants, made me reconsider things. My reconsideration found me lining up the cost of stay far too high for what I was getting. I went to a meeting at a local design agency and I had an ant crawling up my sleeve during the meeting, that’s how bad that problem was. Still, that first impression comes from somewhere. I’ve got a couple pictures here to give you an idea of what I mean: La Posada is really incredible to walk into, especially when you walk to the end of the hall to find the table in the open air garden on the same level as the rooms: http://t.co/0OH4eeZP also http://t.co/fUoyB8mY but the devil is in the details that bothered me later.
Getting back to my arrival though, when I was shown to my room the housing arrangement dawned on me and took form, La Posada is like staying in someone’s expanded guest house, or the second floor of a big family house. While the doors to the rooms can be locked using your skeleton key, I didn’t even bother doing this for a couple reasons. First, if someone wants in that room, they could summon a ten year old to shake the wooden doors open, locked or not. This was proven true by my aforementioned walk-in on my neighbors. Second, the method used to secure the whole compound is by regulating entry through a video and buzz rigged door, which works rather decently. The system would be compromised only if the person responding to a buzz request mistakenly admitted the wrong person, if a guest or otherwise authorized person brought in the wrong type of person with them, and I suppose if someone somehow did not properly close the massive wooden doors downstairs, then you’ve got a potential breech. So, I just locked my important things in my Samsonite luggage and shrugged it off exactly as my neighbors did: I saw an iPhone 4S just sitting out on the common area tables in front of a guest room so they obviously weren’t too concerned about security. Of course, this idea of your assigned room having an element of “the commons” would drive other people crazy, so keep that in mind.
In the end, I stayed at La Posada for a few days but I was hardly there anyway. Two nights I didn’t use the place at all except for storage one night since I was out all night at “boliches” and on the last night I found a far superior option nearby. It was what La Posada might someday be: a restored, modernized, well located boutique hotel that maintains the best of the old construction and combines it with the more modern facilities that travelers want for their money.
The lack of credit card processing, the informality of billing (Eli wasn’t sure when I’d arrived or what my rate was), no inclusion of breakfast (would have been an additional 15 USD for something underwhelming), the severe ant problem in my room, and the fact that I quickly found substantially better options around the corner at very reasonable costs mean I won’t be coming back to this hotel until a renovation happens. Lots of potential here, but it hasn’t happened yet.

San Telmo is a fantastic area though, so keep that in mind. You'll see that in other reviews and searches about the neighborhood, so I won't get into it. Good luck.