Category Archive

Oh dear reader, we’ve really failed you this week… We’ve had to neglect our blogging duties in favor of more seemingly pressing day-to-day affairs…

But to bring you up-to-date… The weather got cold, we caught a cold. The next day the weather warmed and we recovered… We’ve been semi-diligently attending our spanish classes. One off-site conversational session was held at the tea-room of the newly renovated Hyatt Palacio Duhau, talk about fancy pants…

The Hyatt bought the place from a wealthy family just about two years ago. Renovations commenced immediately and the result is impressive… While the dollar plummets against all major world currencies, you really can still get bang-for-your-buck here (that probably won’t last long).  A tea, which includes four different polished silver vessels, costs $12 pesos, or $4 dollars, a beer is $5 dollars, all the while you’re waited on hand-and-foot in high-style. 

A harpist played in the background, old ladies with old money socialized, and yours truly butchered the conversational Castellano… There couldn’t have been a more elegant setting for a Maryland/Virginia countryboy to be linguistically enriched, that’s for sure.

More to come soon, we promise…

Today we found ourselves visiting a broker on behalf of a client. This particular broker has penthouse offices in one of the taller buildings in Buenos Aires. When the elevator arrived at the top floor we stepped out onto a glass encased landing with large glass doors with gold handles. No one was around. We looked across the entry way to a fancy conference room with floor-to-ceiling windows and an incredible view of the Puerto Madera harbor and the Rio Plata.

We stood there gawking at the view for a moment then came to our senses… We knew there must be a little call-box around there somewhere. It was hidden off to one corner. “Hola. Senor Bonner para Senor So-and-So”, we said into the box. “Si, Senor” said the box. Then a neatly dressed secretary came and opened the door for us.

The broker came out and we were surprised that he was about our age, about our same stature, with unruly hair like ours, but much better dressed… We had a quick and productive meeting on behalf of our client. He asked us how we were taking to Buenos Aires and we told him how much we liked it… They take pride in their city, so that usually wins some points. Anyway, our business was already done and it was time for us to leave.

They had to practically push us out of the office as we wanted to stay around and take in that view for a while longer… But back down to the busy streets we went. Hustling and bustling, noisy, wonderful streets…

We covered a lot of ground this weekend, visiting touristy and not-so-touristy sights.

This is what a “strip-mall” looks like in San Telmo… 

The other side of Puerto Madera, where locals come on Sunday to relax with their families.

Street performers draw crowds along the banks of where the Puerto Madera land reserve begins…

The tall and modern buildings are springing up like weeds…

The stairway of the Decorative Arts museum.

A walk through Plaza de Mayo past the Casa Rosada…

A corner of the famous Cafe Tortoni.

Trolling the internet for BA property, as we like to do, we found this stunning italian-style palace, Palacio Estrugamou, that was recently sold: http://www.leticiafirpo.com/fichaventa.php?codigo=73

Here’s more: http://estrugamou.blog.com/

They were asking for $1.2M in late 2006. I think someone got a screaming bargain…

We set-off on Sunday to take the fast-ferry, that runs hourly, from Buenos Aires to Colonia, Uruguay. But we were late getting over there and the seats were sold-out on the next two boats… So, we strolled along the banks of Puerto Madera, then we just kept strolling all the way to the antique market in San Telmo… a place that continues to seduce us…

San Telmo is like an older, yet attractive, forbidden seductress… We at first baulked at her overtures. “It’s too dangerous there”, we thought. But over time we’ve found that the architecture, those beautiful buildings, the authenticity of (most of) it… it’s the ‘real Buenos Aires’ as one reader recently put it… is indeed desirable. And it’s still very cheap.

We’ll get you some pictures and a more thorough report on the place soon…

Buenos Aires has some really great classical architecture, but we feel that we don’t do a very good job of featuring it in this blog…

To compensate for our short-comings, let us point you over to our fellow bloggers at Buenos Aires Weekly who have some great interior photos of the ‘La Prensa’ newspaper building, which was once considered as ‘the most magnificent building in Buenos Aires’.

Definitely worth a look at… http://akworld.net/BAweekly/?p=401

We’ve recently been scouting out some property in the hot, hip area of Palermo Soho… We like the bohemian flavor of the Soho neighborhood, the shops, the restaurants, the attractive classical buildings… but those buildings are deceiving…

The problem has something to do with meat (as many things do in Argentina)… casas de chorizo…

Palermo Soho used to be a poor neighborhood, filled with large low-income families. So, as the families grew they would further divide up the house to make room for the new family members. They just keep adding walls, like sausage links and viola… sausage houses…

You wouldn’t know it when you look at these houses from the outside, but they can be troublesome inside (I didn’t see inside all these particular ones, so I don’t know)…

It’s certainly not true of all. But many we’ve found have very poor interior layouts… Of course, you can renovate and it can be done cheaply here… but that takes time and money.

Anyway, in the competitive Soho real estate market you’ve got to pay attention and be quick on the draw to find that special property…

By the way, another expat blogger at http://movingtoargentina.typepad.com/ pointed out a segment on NPR’s ‘Marketplace’ radio program today about Soho called Soho on the Cheap.

A Day in Buenos Aires

Nicely done video tour of various sights in Buenos Aires…

Today we visited one of the more famous areas of Buenos Aires that we hadn’t yet been to, San Telmo. We had heard mixed reviews of the place, so went to take a look for ourselves… What we found was a touristy sort of bohemian area of blocked-off streets, not super exciting, but not disappointing either.

Numerous musicians and street performers were plying their art in the streets. Some were quite good, playing a Django Reinhardt sort of fast-paced gypsy jazz…

Others were mere tourist sideshows…

The architecure was nice. Much of it reminicient of New Orleans…

I wish I had taken more pictures, but amidst the tourist hordes we wanted to look like locals… Anyway, there’ll be plenty more chances to explore San Telmo in future.

The French Embassy juts out into the main BA thoroughfare ‘9 de Julio’ (the largest urban avenue in the world). I’ve been told that this is because when the dictator at the time was demolishing entire blocks of beautiful classical buildings to widen ‘9 de Julio’ (to march his armies up and down) the French fortified their Embassy and wouldn’t let it be destroyed… sounds like the French anyway…

I’ve seen it argued on other expat blogs whether or not BA should be compared to Paris… To me it does indeed have a Parisian flavor to it. There are many fine examples of French architecure, but it certainly doesn’t have the architectual splendor of Paris… So, I’ll leave it at that for the moment and I’ll post as many picures as I can in this blog to let you draw your own conclusions… Also, check out this website with many very nice photos of BA: http://baires.multiply.com/