Hostel Hopping: Milhouse Hipo and Avenue
Hostels breathe life into the backpacker trail. They are our home away from home, providing shelter, organizing activities, and creating a sense of community. Each hostel has its own ambiance and personality, layout and design. Hostels can be an epicenter of fun backpacker happenings. Every so often we showcase a cool hostel somewhere around the world!
This week we take a look at the two Milhouse Hostels in Argentina.
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina, right in the heart of downtown not too far from the Obelisco where many cultural events and gatherings take place. A wide range of plazas, food stops, and museums are walking distance. Other well-known neighborhoods such as Recoleta and Puerto Madero are roughly 20-minute walks away.
What’s awesome: An amazing kitchen and breakfast menu for hungry and occasionally hungover guests. A basement with event planning and concierge services. Organized outings to Boca Juniors football matches and tango dancing classes. Funky layout with Victorian architecture, courtyards and spiral staircases. Quilmes on tap at all hours of the day.
What’s unique: Milhouse proudly purports the party atmosphere, with organized pub crawls and events at their own bars virtually every night. There are actually two sister locations in Buenos Aires across the Av 9 de Julio road from one another. The two, “Avenue” and “Hipo,” coordinate party nights, with one’s bar often closing down and funneling guests to the other. What this creates is a large mass of 100+ people, and it's great because half of the people you’ve never seen milling around before. It’s a way to mix the guests. The Milhouse chain also has a newer location in Cusco.
Stories: There is a sex cinema nearby with a very powerful sound system, and the echoes of the films can be heard throughout the hostel corridors. Many new guests upon arrival are a bit taken aback by this, and simply assume some backpacker sex is taking place in an adjacent dorm room. After a while though one really starts to wonder about this odd, prolonged noise and why it’s so loud in the middle of the day. Typically another resident backpacker will clue you in to the existence of the sex cinema. After a day or two it becomes routine and you barely notice it anymore.
Milhouse once held a beer pong tournament. The organizer of the event weren't sure how much beer to use and erred on the side of crazy, so they filled each of ten cups with an entire beer, and the center cup with a shot of vodka. Split with a teammate, that’s five standard drinks each for one round of play. There were at least three rounds. It was a hazy night for all and the bar had to change the keg at least once. No shortage of crazy times at Milhouse.
Photos courtesy of Milhouse Hostels.
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