You know the scene. You open the door to your brand new hotel room, run over to the window, open the blinds and bam, you are hit with the anti-view. Maybe you are looking down a dirty alley, witnessing a drug deal, staring at an air shaft in the face, or seeing a brick wall. Whatever you are viewing it is not extremely pleasurable. Help out your fellow hotel mavens by uploading your anti-views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number with the not-so-easy-on-the-eyes view.
Gray weather doesn't help this particularly gray anti-view from the Lyon Hotel in Buenos Aires. A huge mess of power lines doesn't help either, and unless you can really focus on that tiny strip where you can see something like an old church, there's really nothing pretty to look at at all. Having said that, the photographer was extremely fair :
All said and done, a decent hotel. The view is typical of the central part of the city.
Yep, a very fair opinion. At least the rates aren't too exorbitant--$85 for a double or $100 a night for a triple suite also seems fair, given the views are nothing to write home about.
Last year, Buenos Aires gadabout Matt Chesterton filled us in on the boutique hotel scene in the city. And wouldn't you know, we needed a place to crash after our long trip to Uruguay. (Our flight was out of Ezeiza airport in BsAs.)
So we looked up La Cayetana, after reading Matt's dead-on description:
Here's a boutique where the designers (Estela Fitere and Silvina Tarrio) have devoted more than 10 minutes and a few phone calls to their scheme. A perfect blend of restored original features (the mosaic floors, the high bare-brick ceilings, the free-standing tubs) and modern conveniences (Wi-Fi, etc).
We really enjoyed our one-night stay, and our full review, complete with another video tour is after the jump.
The Faena Hotel + Universe in Buenos Aires has unveiled some new "over the top" suites to its hotel rooms--the F Suite, Tower Suite, and Imperial Suite.
Pictured above is the F Suite which is a 1,291-sq.ft residence located on the 6th floor of hotel. It has two bedrooms, three bathrooms, living and dining rooms, a kitchen, a library and panoramic views of the Faena Art District, embankment and city center of Buenos Aires.
One of the bathrooms sports a rain forest shower and Jacuzzi and the hotel continues to hold onto its geek status by outfitting the room with three 42-inch plasma screens.
Each year we release our Best and Worst Hotel WiFi Lists and in 2007 we decided to add an international component. Using our far-flung contributors and our own experiences, we kicked off a list of hotels with good and bad WiFi policies from Australia to the Argentina.
For those looking to surf the web at this hotel, you should be more than satisfied. The entire property has a strong internet connection, 802.11 present throughout, and a healthy bandwidth well into the megs. Topping that, you can work poolside even using VOIP while you sip an açaí smoothie. If only all international hotels would offer the same service.
Page Six reports that rocker Chris Cornell, formerly of Audioslave, and his wife were staying at the upscale hotel when their hotel room was flooded. What?? How does a hotel room far away from a beach get flooded? Here's how:
A pal of Cornell's said, "after performing in front of a sold-out 20,000-capacity arena*, Chris returned to his room and was relaxing with Vicky when the walls started trembling, like in an earthquake. Then, Chris smelled something burning, and suddenly, the entire entrance of the hallway collapsed and gallons of freezing cold water entered the room. Within a matter of moments, Chris and his wife were up to their knees in water . . . They finally scrambled out but lost a lot of stuff."
Yikes! A rep for Cornell said the couple lost about $30,000 worth in valuables. Hopefully, the Faena will be able to recuperate that for them. Still no word on exactly why this place flooded.
* Chris' pal sure knows about how to promote his sold-out 20,000-capacity arena performance.
If your dream New Year's Eve celebrations involve a hotel which is hip (or crazy) enough to have a few rooms decked out in Barbie and Hot Wheels themes, then heading south to the Hilton Buenos Aires is the plan for you come December 31.
There's a big event on at the Buenos Aires Hilton if you stay for New Year's Eve and book their special package. You'll get a room facing the lobby, with NYE dinner served on the balcony area so you can watch the lobby show.
After dinner, you're invited to the Buen Ayre ballroom for a post-midnight party, Buenos Aires style (that means hard!). The package also includes private car pick up and drop off to the airport.
As well as the Barbie and Hot Wheels rooms, the Hilton is still talking about its recent renovations, which included upgrades to pretty much everything: suites, dining outlets, spa, health club, and so on.
A three-night New Year's Eve package, including dinner and the party, will set you back just $399 plus taxes.
In the efforts of keeping up with luxury spa treatments using rich or unusual ingredients, the spa at Hilton Buenos Aires has introduced the Luxury Caviar Spa treatment.
Supposedly, the tiny eggs contain some kind of skin-firming properties. The three-hour treatment includes a welcome tea/drink, steam bath, whirlpool with "ozone therapy" (whatever that is), the facial treatment with caviar, followed by a regenerating mask with nacre (an amino-acid rich substance found in oyster shells), a body massage with even more caviar and silk, and a lymphatic massage (to help the nodes move their fluids along). The whole event is followed by a snack and relaxation room time.
The over-the-top series of indulgences seems like a ploy to extract as much cash from guests as possible. However, it's actually pretty cheap. Until November 15th, the hotel is charging a special price of AR$220 (taxes included), about $70.00 U.S.
Finisterra is actually a fine looking place, even if everything has been ordered from Boutique Fittings Ltd. The main draw is the location, in Las Caņitas, yet another Palermo sub-barrio.
Las Caņitas has thrived lately as a neighborhood for nightclubs, shops, sushi restaurants and bars for the "young and beautiful" so says Ian Mount of the New York Times, who reviewed the hotel for the paper's "Check In, Check Out" column.
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by amandak
Each year we release our Best and Worst Hotel WiFi Lists and in 2007 we decided to add an 
