Despite the high profile robbery of Francis Ford Coppola’s petit-hotel in Palermo Viejo (Soho) two weeks ago, the area is nevertheless booming…

This weekend the weather was absolutely gorgeous and the streets of this small area of Palermo were packed with tourists, hipsters, regular ol’ Portenos, your editor, and his beautiful wife. The area has it’s detractors, but we’re not drinking the haterade…

No, Palermo Viejo is probably the most appealing neighborhood in Buenos Aires. Plaza Serrano, the hub of this little sub-barrio, can get old quickly, as it tends to get too busy, too touristy. But you can easily avoid it and enjoy the boutiques, the wares of the street-vendors, the bars, restaurants, and charm of the surrounding streets.

With the lower building heights, usually no more than three stories, the place just gets more light… it also allows for car pollution to escape more easily…

We’ve sometimes hesitated to give Palermo Viejo much acknowledgement in this blog because it feels like kind of a cop-out… The neighborhood has too many foreigners… It’s too gentrified… That may be true, but, those factors can also make the place more appealing. To each his own we say.

But if I were to place a bet on a neighborhood, we’d put our money there… but it can be tricky as there’s little for sale, plenty for rent, but little for sale… But we’ve seen some deals around.

Especially if there’s a dip in the economy here after the election, we’d watch this area like a hawk for any good deals…