Category Archive

In so many ways Buenos Aires is calm and safe. In so many ways it can be just the opposite…

News just came in that Coppola’s home and office was broken into last night, his employees tied up and his laptop, containing work for his new movie, stolen along with other electronics… Ouch!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/27/people.coppola.ap/index.html

From the Clarin in Spanish: http://www.clarin.com/diario/2007/09/27/um/m-01507593.htm

Visit this blog for more about Coppola in Buenos Aires:

http://trendypalermoviejo.blogspot.com/search/label/Francis%20Ford%20Coppola%27s%20hotel

If you’ve been thinking about visiting Argentina… If you want to experience the vibrant culture, the friendly people, the opportunities, the beautiful and diverse landscapes… then you won’t want to miss this tour organized by my friends at Agora Travel this November 3rd-16th.

This tour is unique and exclusive (only 16 people) as it is done with a private chartered plane, so, you can travel quickly, comfortably, and hassle-free around Argentina, covering more destinations than you could with traditional airlines (especially Aerolinas Argentinas!).

The tour is also interesting in that it is oriented towards investment opportunities around the country: apartments in Buenos Aires, developments, vineyard and forestry projects, and rural estancias …

Over the years Agora Travel has established some excellent contacts in Argentina. This tour gives you access to those trustworthy and knowledgeable professionals, which is extremely important for you to be able to invest with confidence…

The investment aspects aside, the tour covers some of the most enchanting locations in Argentina: Buenos Aires… Bariloche… Mendoza… Salta (pictured above)… Misiones… the Iguazu Falls…

Basically this is a trip of a lifetime, a chance to explore the best that a beautiful country has to offer…

Click here to get all the details: http://www.agoratravel.com/investsouthamerica/wb/

FYI: We’ll be speaking to the people on this tour in Buenos Aires. We don’t know what we’ll say but, we’ll do our best to offer some interesting “off-the-blog” insights to Buenos Aires and Argentina, what we don’t want everyone to know about…

Last night we finally delved into the Buenos Aires art scene… We went to the gallery night event where many of the art galleries in Retiro and Recoleta stay open late and serve champagne on the last Friday of every month. The event is sponsored by a number of banks and local businesses and about 30 or so galleries participate. We went there with a group of expats, mostly Americans, including a couple of Argentine Americans… We had a very nice time.

We’re not exactly in the income bracket that purchases art, certainly not in the US, but here in BA we can almost pull it off. And, hell, when there’s free champagne involved you can consider us collectors!

But, in a gallery with a lot of uninteresting crapola you’ve got to play it cool. You can’t just go barrelling towards the free champagne and then run out of there, even though that’s what you want to do. The complimentary bubbly is usually strategically placed and guarded, so one must feign interest in order to win a legitimate refill.

Your editor at times found himself enquiring the price of some monstrous canvas or another so that he could suavely replenish his glass… And we know we were not alone in this…

That said, we did come across a couple very nice works… some high quality still-lifes… an interesting surrealist piece… and some intricate landscapes… We may well count our pennies and return to one of these galleries and see if we can come away with something.

All that gallery hopping gave us quite an appetite, so around 10pm (a respectable dinner-time for Portenos) we headed over to a parrilla restaurant to add the weight of some redmeat to the artsy evening. On the way there we came across a soccer-hooligan rally that was being closely monitored by riot police. Some in our group saw this as a photo-op and posed alongside the riot police standing by… surely a keeper for the photo album…

We enjoyed a great parrilla dinner and some nice conversation. It seems to us a bit of a copout to hang out with Americans when in Argentina. But the thing about Buenos Aires is that it attracts certain kinds of Americans, the more interesting types, who can make for good company… So, while we don’t spend a lot of time around expats, we tend to have a good time when we do…

Caetano Veloso doesn’t look like a rockstar. He resembles more a middle-aged tourist… And he doesn’t dance like you’d think a Brazilian rockstar would… instead his onstage moves were more like those of a drunk accountant at a wedding. But he and his band absolutely rocked the Gran Rex in Buenos Aires.

Most of the songs were technically impressive with tricky time-signatures and a lot of change-ups. It resembled American jamband/rock music,  but with a large blend of styles and some brazilian flare…

Argentines are generally very reserved at music concerts, but Veloso brought them to their feet on quite a few ocassions…

We and our friends were all very impressed with the concert. If you get a chance to see this guy somewhere we’d recommend it.

It’s been a surprisingly cold winter here in Buenos Aires, not just for us, but for Portenos as well. It’s been one of the coldest on record… of course, it’s not that bad, but does take us delicate Floridians by surprise…

Anyway, we’ve been letting you down this past week dear reader, it’s becoming a bad habit with us…

It was a busy week, half of which we spent up in the northwestern corner of Argentina, in Salta province, on business. It was refreshing to get out of the city and Salta is way out… Where we needed to go, it’s a five hour drive, mostly on dirt roads, from Salta city. The land is like the southwestern US, high-desert. The big open sky was perfectly clear for our drive and the landscape was beautiful. But as we got close to our destination, the sky began to get sort of fuzzy up ahead…

There still wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but the wind was picking-up and we realized that the fuzzyness was airborne dust. By now the sky was dark with dust clouds and we watched as seemingly sentient walls of dust moved back and forth across the mesa. As we continued on our way one of these walls of dust slammed into the side of our truck and briefly blacked-out visibility from all windows… But the dust walls seemed to content themselves by staying to the other side of the valley. When we arrived at our dusty destination the roar of the wind was impressive and constant. It sounded like there was an ocean a couple of feet away repeatedly crashing against invisible rocks. The loud and powerful wind continued all night long and it seemed sometimes that the doors and windows might give way… We’ve ridden out powerful hurricanes before, and this was something similar. The next morning it was sunny and beautiful, with a light breeze…

Before this trip we had looked forward to showing off the new Castellano speaking and understanding skills that we thought we now had… But nay, it was not to be.

We were terrible. Maybe it was all the dust in our ears, or the altitude. Whatever it was, we spoke horribly, making even very simple mistakes… We could barely understand anything. Maybe it was that Saltanian accent, or the farm subject matter, that was throwing us off… No, no excuses can explain away the fact that we’ve made much less progress in the Spanish-language department than we thought we had. Luckily for us a bilingual friend was there to help out. But our plan of being linguistically independent and incisive, shedding the tourist foreigner label, becoming nearly Argentine with a slight accent, a Porteno out visiting Salta… was soundly dashed…

Until next time… and next time we might even write about something remotely useful…

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…

Travelers voted Buenos Aires the second most desirable city to visit after Florence, Italy… While we find that an impressive coup for this south american metropolis, it’s not surprising. The longer we stay here the more we like it…

Hasta la proxima.

It’s no secret that they eat late here in Argentina, but for whatever reason the reality of this fact takes time to sink in…

We hold out for as long as we possibly can, till around 8:30 when the restaurants will actually let you in, and then we’re usually the first or second people there… When we finish dinner at around 9:30-10 we know that things are only just starting to pick up.

It takes some getting used to.

One secret to holding out till so late to eat is maté. We’re always impressed by the feeling of well-being after drinking maté. Also, this yerba tea helps stymie your hunger…

When we were in Salta, a gaucho who worked on the farm we visited would pretty much only drink maté throughout the day and then eat a big dinner… He was slim and trim… He inspired us to invent ‘The Gaucho Diet’, a new and exciting diet craze consisting of drinking maté, horse-back riding, spending many lonely days out under the big open sky, and wearing cool traditional outfits…

Or maybe it’s just the maté. Whatever it is the Argentines eat good food, lots of meats and carbs, things that taste good. They eat late. They do everything that Americans are not supposed to do… yet, it’s very rare to see a fat Argentine…

Last night we went with some Porteno friends to the Opera Pampa show at La Rural. As usual we had no idea what it was we were going to see, and our assumption that it was an ‘opera’ in the traditional sense was completely faulty…

Instead it was a live action theater production telling the story of Argentine history through song, dance, battle reenactments, and impressive horseback-riding…

La Rural, situated next to the US Embassy in Palermo, is a nicely restored complex that was once a sort of livestock convention arena… It has some stands that surround a rectangular riding rink and stage. From the stands we watched the dancers and horseman act out various stages in the taming of the pampas and the establishment of Argentina.

We had a pretty good general idea of how Argentina was founded and this show confirmed our view of how similar it was to the founding of the US… colonization of a bountiful new world, the purging of the natives, the fight for independence from the colonizing nation, the battle between the federalists and anti-federalists, the settling and taming of the wild west, and the hardwork and prosperity that followed… Of course, the colonizing nation was a different one which made the legal and government structure different, but the similarities are many…

Now back to the show, as we said the horseback-riding was quite good. The horses that they rode were Criollos a very well dispositioned Argentine breed, a decendent of the horses that the Conquistadors brought. In the show they did demonstrations of Argentine equestrian events. They also did tricks, like having the horses all lie-down in unison, and galluping into formations…

All in all it was an enjoyable show that we would recommend to visitors.

We’re going to try and round-up some pictures from someone… unfortunately our new digital camera slipped off an ottoman the other day and is no longer functioning. It was a disappointing loss, before we’d gotten even a fraction of our money’s worth out of the thing… uggghh.

There’s little hope of it being fixed and I don’t know if we can bring ourselves to buy another one in such short order. But for you dear reader we trouble and toil, perhaps we’ll get a cheap little gizmo, so at least you’ll have some pictures to look at to distract from our boring writings…

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.

“Everyday in Buenos Aires is a relentless battle for cambio.” That was what an acquaintance told us when we were newly arrived in the city… It struck us as silly then.

 But, oh how true it is… The conspicuous $100 peso note ($30USD) inspires fear and loathing in the hearts of cab-drivers and cashiers across the city… The reason for this is partially because of all the counterfeit currency in circulation. But it boarders on the ridiculous as you’re driven to desperate lengths in search of small bills…

 Yet again, upon arriving at our destination with nothing but one of these dreaded hundreds we had to run around in the night, like a chicken with our head cut-off, in search of the coveted cambio.

Yes, we were prepared earlier in the night. We had cambio. But cambio has a way of disappearing like you wouldn’t believe…

We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Last night’s taxi ride brought us from our first tango show, the ultimate Buenos Aires tourist event… With a visitor in town we figured we might as well take the plunge. So we signed ourselves up for a dinner and show at Esquina Homero Manzi in Boedo. Manzi apparently was a famous tango lyrics writer in the 40’s. He wrote his first show when he was 14 years-old…

The ambiance seemed authentic. The music and the dancing were very nice. We weren’t bowled-over by it. But it was memorable. The food, however, not so much…

It’s inspired us to check out some more tango shows in San Telmo. We bought the musicians’ CD at the show. And we’ll probably listening to more tango music… All and all a good experience, just next time, we’re bringing more cambio…

In the Buenos Aires Herald we find this tidbit… about a drunk British cameraman who stole a taxi outside Cordoba city and drove himself to his hotel to take a nap…

Evidently, the journalist, who was supposed to be covering some kind of Argentine rally for a major English TV station (BBC?) went looking for a cab to take him back to his hotel. Unable to find a taxi with an actual taxi driver, this gonzo journalist, took matters into his own hands… Finding a taxi with the keys in it he stole away with it back to his hotel…

The article didn’t say what happened to this intrepid newsman other than that he was arrested. Quite a Hunter Thompson moment… and that’ll be quite a hang-over in Cordoba prison, ouch…

Yesterday we made the expatriate pilgrimage to renew our visas… a one hour fast-ferry ride across the Rio Plata to the pretty historic coastal village of Colonia, Uruguay.

Unfortunately it was a bit overcast, but we still have some nice pictures to show you (almost all of which were taken by our better, more talented, half)…

Last night we attended our first ‘expat’ event here in BA… held by the ‘Young Expatriates Society of Buenos Aires’… YesBA.

We’ve met assorted (and sometimes sordid) expats in assorted places over the years. They’re an interesting breed. But not always in the way that you’d expect…. Sometimes they’re surprisingly regular people who hold the same views about most things as the majority of people do in your hometown USA, or UK. They seemed to have been beamed into their new environment and remain wholly untouched or effected by it.

Other times though, they’re totally off the wall and original.

We met one such character last night. Actually we had arranged to meet him there… the infamous, Yanqui Mike an American blogger who married an Argentine and has lived here for 4 years.

Because of his marital ties Mike is immersed, and committed to Argentina, on a much higher-level than most expats. We got some interesting insights about the country from him as we hoped we would…

Before he arrived we were trying to guess which of the guys there could be this Yanqui Mike character. Was it the guy in the bright red shirt long hair and suspicious goatee? Or what about that one drifting aimlessly around the bar looking at the ceiling? No. It must be the guy who just came in with the purple beret… “Hey Mike!?” “Oh, sorry!” Nope, not him either…

He, of course, found us immediately from our picture. And he looked everything and nothing like we expected…

Many Americans move overseas to reinvent themselves. And they do obtain an instant exoticness when doing so and a whole world of new stimuli to make things interesting… But all of this quickly fades. Things become regular and normal, ho hum. It still depends on who they are inside as to whether they’ll be happy in a new place or not.

Well, that’s enough obnoxious philosophising for the day… Till tomorrow…

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…

Well it happened… Just like that Bush twin who famously got her purse stolen at an outdoor restaurant in Buenos Aires, my sister got her’s stolen today… And your editor was present and accounted for when it happened, just like the bungling Secret Service…

Being the trusting country-girl that she is, my sister put her purse under her chair when we ate, a tempting mark for some thieving dirt-bags…

 A suspicious man came up while we were eating and drawing our attention to the flyer in his hand asked for directions to a restaurant. My wife and I immediately knew something was up… Locals don’t ask foreigners for directions. We waved him off saying we didn’t know, keeping an eye on him. Our stuff was secure, or so we thought, and we didn’t think much of it…

When we were getting up to leave my sister realized her purse was gone. Of course, we knew immediately who did it, at least we knew one of his scuzzy little pals had slipped a hand under my sister’s chair when we were distracted… it only took a second, as the cliche goes…

But at least we took pleasure knowing that they didn’t get much for their trouble. My sister is a recent college grad and flat-broke. She had about 40 pesos in her purse and really nothing else… credit cards were immediately cancelled. The only real problem is her driver’s license which will be a minor hassle to replace…

I wish so badly I’d caught them in the act. I was wearing some hard-soled boots at the time. And I think I picked up a few moves from watching that street fighting video about 20 times…

Fellow expat blogger, Alan Patrick, has created a very nice self-guided tour itinerary for the city center at http://www.buenostours.com/buenos-aires-tour-1-city-center-suggested-walking-route

 Alan is a former walking-tour guide, so, he knows what he’s talking about.

 We have some family and friends coming into town tomorrow, so, if we have the time (they’ll only be in town briefly) we’ll take this tour with them…

After this weekend, dear readers, you’ll get a needed respite from our prattle… We’re headed up to Salta province in the northwest of Argentina where we’ll have very limited internet access, so during that time we will not be updating this blog… but rest assured we’ll let you know all about it upon our return…

Happy Easter!

‘Twas the day after St. Patrick’s Day, and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even my spouse
Clothes from last night flung around the room without care
And a splitting headache, the legacy of St. Patrick, was there
—

Okay, that’s enough of that…

In the Retiro neighborhood where we live there are a number of Irish pubs on Reconquista street. They had closed off the streets and a conspicuous number of English-speakers began to gather…

We met up with a friend and found a less busy, but not empty pub (called John John) in which to partake in the revelry… The music shifted back and forth between traditional Irish, 80’s pop, and thumping techno. After a while we decided to look for something more authentic which we found… I forget the name of this other pub, but they had a great Argentine band playing live Irish folk music. They were very good… and the Kilkenny and Guiness flowed…

Before too long the streets were getting packed with teeny boppers, drunken Anglos, and assorted party-goers. We decided to make a graceful rather than less graceful exit. We were back home by around 1am… but our tolerance is low these days and we suffered the next morning.

But the weather was so nice we were lured outside by the early afternoon… We had a wonderful walk around the city and went to see a house that was on my interesting property ’watch list’…

We had lunch at a surprisingly good French restaurant called Croque Madame (a gourmet lunch for two with coffee and dessert was $25), which is actually part of a museum, but we didn’t bother to see what the museum was…

We strolled through some of the Palermo parks and on a nice day like today we strolled slowly…

 Then when we reached Recoleta, at the Sunday open-air market, they were having a music festival with a couple bands playing. Hippy Argentines were lounging in the grass, throwing frisbees, doing hippy things…

It was very pleasant. And I’m almost always impressed with Argentine musicians. They have some great talents here…

It got off to a rough start, but it ended up being one of those special Sundays…

A Day in Buenos Aires

Nicely done video tour of various sights in Buenos Aires…

According to the Buenos Aires Herald, US film director Francis Ford Coppola and his daughter Sofia shelled out $900,000 for a Petit Hotel in the hip Palermo Soho neighborhood… They plan to stay there when they work on an upcoming film here in Argentina.

The picture below is of a street just a few blocks away from the Coppola’s new digs, where we went for a walk today. I’d like to see what they bought because I’m sure it’s nice… (Maybe we’ll post the picture when we find it…)

UPDATE: Here’s the Coppola’s new home in Palermo, not a great photo, but it gives you a feel for the place (we found it online, an Argentine blog…).

Above is a picture of the street we live on. The majority of the streets in Buenos Aires are treelined, which is very attractive… We take it for granted now, but especially in some areas where the trees are mature you notice how nice they are…

The city wasn’t named Buenos Aires for nothing… The weather is great. It’s summer, but not super hot. Most of the time we’ve been here it’s been clear, sunny, in the low to mid-70s. People tend to think that it’s going to be steamy jungle weather down here, but that’s not at all the case. It’s very mild. The year round average is 69F…

“Palermo Soho, Palermo Viejo, that’s all you hear from the Americans moving down here. They don’t seem to realize that the rest of the city exists.”

That was the complaint of an Argentine woman we interviewed for a writing job.

“The Palermos are nice… but they don’t have the charm nor the architecture that Recoleta has…”

We thought it was funny how she was offended by the foreigners’ obsession with one area of her city.

We also met today with an American, an International Living reader, who moved to Buenos Aires two and a half years ago. He’s in real estate in various capacities, and had this to say, “I love living here and have met some wonderful people, but there are some who just want to get whatever they can out of you while they have the chance. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, they don’t think they’ll get another chance, so they stick it to you… And of course you won’t do business with them again!

“They have a mindset that wealth is limited. They don’t want money. They want your money! Some people get involved with an Argentine who speaks good English and assume that they also have the same values… that’s not a good assumption to make. But there are a lot of foreigners in the marketplace demanding smooth, secure, and ethical transactions. And I think they’ll be rewarded for their investments.

“Argentine real estate has another doubling to go, at least. The cat’s out of the bag on Argentina. Yes, there’s a deduction for the fact that they speak Spanish and not French or English, and for the distance from Europe and USA. I’d call that 20%-30%. That means $6,000-$8,000 per sq meter, nearly three and four times what places are currently fetching… I want to ride that wave don’t you?!”

We left our new acquaintance feeling a bit woozy… “Triple? Quadruple?” we thought. “Hmmm…” This reminded us of Florida a couple years ago… That could be trouble. But we too want to make hay while the sun is shining…

You can still get a nice apartment in a nice part of town for around $250k-$300k here in BA. But, there’s a boom underway and prices have more than doubled since the financial crisis in 2001. That doesn’t mean it’s too late… Let’s take a quick look at some of the different neighborhoods and what they offer…

Palermo- This is the largest area of BA and it breaks down into a number of sub-areas such as Palermo Viejo, Palermo Chico, Palermo Soho etc. all with different flavors of their own. Palermo is where the large parcs of Buenos Aires are (the largest urban parks I’ve seen, like Central Park…). Palermo Chico is an old money area where you’ll find many Embassies. Palermo Soho is redhot with expat money right now. It’s nice, young, hip, and very appealing. But it could be getting maxed out… just too hot…

Recoleta and Retiro- The old money neighborhoods of BA. Safe, but kind of loud depending on where you are. There are still good values to be had here… in old classical buildings that wealthier Argentines are not so interested in…

Puerto Madera- Modern converted port area of BA with new luxury condos. This is just like in an American city. It’s nice and quiet, but doesn’t really appeal to me… Also, it’s expensive. The wealthier Argentines are pouring in here. A good apartment will cost about $400k…

San Telmo- Very touristy area during the day. Not super safe apparently. But you can get better bargains here.

Nunez- Far north part of the city. We haven’t been here yet. But it’s supposed to be similar to Palermo Soho, but cheaper, a new expat hotspot… The drawback is the distance from the goings-on downtown, probably need a car. (I haven’t talked about Argentine driving yet… but I will, in a few words, “be a afraid, be very afraid”)

Of course, it’s a huge city. And there’s still tons for us to see. But I wanted to set the ground work for a real estate search…

The best online tool for BA properties is this one mentioned in my links as a Realtor.com for Argentina: http://www.topinmobiliario.com/ It’s in spanish, but you can figure it out… Of course, http://craigslist.org for BA is good too.

We live in the Retiro area of BA, near the border with Recoleta. Most of the time we’ve been here we would usually head into Recoleta for dinner and drinks. But recently we’ve found that Retiro also has a lot to offer. There’s a nice strip of bars and restaurants on San Martin street, behind the Marriott and San Martin Plaza. 

The Dada Bar, pictured above, http://www.whatsupbuenosaires.com/tourism/goingout_view.php?id=141 is a nice quirky little bar/restaurant. We haven’t tried the food yet. But it’s supposed to be good. San Martin street runs parallel with the main tourist drag Florida which is closed off from cars. Both streets begin at San Martin Plaza which is a very nice park (pictures to come).

As we rushed out of the Ezeiza airport after 20 hours of travelling the warm Argentine air never felt so good… for a moment we even smiled at the taxi hustlers who accost you coming out of the airport… then we snarled at them to take a hike… (BTW: a trip from the airport to downtown should cost about $50-60 pesos, about $20-25USD)

We ran into a traffic jam as our driver pulled onto 9 de Julio, caused by some kind of street protest, one that blocked a couple lanes on the other side of the avenue… They were also setting off some very loud fireworks and protesting aggressively. This was a little different than the protest we saw in Bonn, Germany where protesters strolled along the sidewalk as if it were a charity walk.

In Argentina they do things differently than in Alemania. German efficiency and logic versus Latino chaos and passion. It’s an old cliche, that’s usually more on the mark than off. But it’s also a gross generalization…

We were surprised by all the smoking that the Germans do. They must have some of the most lax smoking laws of anywhere we’ve been in a while. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I like personal freedoms. But as a former smoker, I don’t like having to breathe it so often…

When you come into Buenos Aires from the airport, to me it’s one of the more attractive rides from most any airport in the world, it’s so lush and green, and the roads are surprisingly good. Also, there’s just not much graffiti in BA in comparison to many European cities. Punk kids here simply can’t afford the spray paint!

In Germany it’s ultra-safe almost everywhere. Nearly everyone you pass looks respectable. The same is not true for BA. It’s not really true of the US either…

We reflected on these things as our taxi pulled up to our apartment building this morning… But when we saw our lovely wife after being deprived of her for a week none of that mattered anyway…

We got blogged. We were flatteringly mentioned by a veteran BA blogger over at www.buenostours.com in his useful, insider Buenos Aires Blog Round-up… we are now anointed contributors to the “splitting-at-the-seams Buenos Aires blogosphere”. It reminded me of the Monty Python skit in ‘The Meaning of Life’, “Just a thin-mint, Sir”, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly…” and the massive fat guy explodes…

Anyway, Buenos Tours will give you practical insider knowledge of BA culture and of where to go in the city. The USP, the unique-selling-proposition of our blog, on the other hand, is our complete lack of knowledge. It’s about the process of discovery. So, when we find ourselves on the radar of seasoned expats such as Buenos Tours we blush at our ignorance…

Some friends are in town on a tour of Argentine investment opportunities in both real estate and stocks. They’re headed out to Salta for the first leg of their tour. With one night in BA, we took them out to a swank bar/restaurant in a very well preserved and converted mansion with a beautiful courtyard. We somehow fen-angled the best seats in the house on the balcony (the balcony at the top of the stairs in the photo) overlooking the courtyard. You can see pictures here on their quirky flash website (if you can figure out how to navigate it): http://www.milion.com.ar/w2/index.html More photos and reviews here: http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/South_America/Argentina/Distrito_Federal/Buenos_Aires-1541981/Nightlife-Buenos_Aires-Milion-BR-1.html

The current owner inherited the place in the late 90’s and as a young man he struggled to maintain it and pay all the expenses etc. Then when the financial turmoil of the early 2000’s struck he did the only thing he could think of to save the place and not have to sell… he started a bar in the basement… When that was successful he opened a restaurant on the first floor. The food was not great. But the ambiance more than makes up for it and they make some good drinks including a tasty scotch mojito. The place is now internationally known, and worth a visit if you’re in BA…

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.

A January article in Newsweek makes BA sound quite alluring: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16500159/site/newsweek/

Written by a friend of a friend this article makes one want to get involved with the hip artists’ underground of BA, which we haven’t discovered yet… Of course, I don’t think we actually have time for much undergound hipster activity…

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…

We got into Buenos Aires on Tuesday, other than a snafu bringing our parrot through customs (he did make it), everything went smoothly… [BTW: We 'smuggled' him onto the cabin of the plane because he was supposed to go down with the luggage but we were worried something would happen to him down there, so, we put his cage in a discreet gym bag and carried him on instead of checking him. Luckily we didn't go through security again right before getting on the plane. It went fine except once when we were giving him water he made some noise struggling to get out, but we neutralized that with some coughing and zipped up the bag...] Like us, he was happy when the flight was over…

The weather has been great, it’s summer, sunny in the mid 70s with a cool breeze. We’ve been going out to eat a lot at the outdoor restaurants to enjoy the weather and the low prices…

It’s been a little tricky setting up the home-office. We’ve had some close calls with the electrical adaptors, one of which started smoking and was briefly on fire, another one made my laptop screen flicker wildly… Also, it’s been a helluva time setting up the wireless in the apartment.

Argentine retail of electronics is pretty far behind the US. They don’t have any “big-box” stores that we’ve seen, (which is why we had to buy the adaptors at sketchy mom-and-pop shops…) It’s slim pickins and expensive, and they only keep one or two of each item in stock, then you have to make sure that what’s in the box matches what the box says… and of course you have to communicate in Spanish which is tricky in itself for some of us… So, I finally struck pay-dirt after buying the second wireless router…

But configuring the router was a different story. Of course, it didn’t go as the ‘EZ 1-2-3′ setup claimed… but after finally getting in touch with the US technical support, in India, via my Skype internet phone we got things figured out. Now Shirley and I don’t have to work from our bedroom tangled in a web of cords…

As you can see things are coming together. I’m studying my Spanish, getting ready for classes, so I’ll have some idea of what’s happening around here… And maybe someday we’ll even get a business going!