First Weekly Buenos Aires Blog Update

[4th - 10th December 2006]

Hello and welcome to the first of my new weekly highlights posts covering what has caught my eye in the Buenos Aires blogosphere. Think of this a kind of a low-brow Global Voices Online solely covering BA.

Unfortunately, I can’t write in this blog as much as I would like to, but there are many other excellent blogs about BA out there - and so I am going to let them do some of the work for me! Most of the ones I know of can be found listed over at the excellent Bloggers in Argentina.

Each week I will link to the best blog posts I have read that I think will be of interest to visitors to Buenos Aires, and post the links up here, with a little commentary added. If I have missed something interesting out or seem to be overlooking a whole blog completely, please comment below to draw my attention to it. Here goes (warning, there is a lot this week!)…

Buenos Aires Sights

• To start proceedings off on a sobering tone, Line of Sight blogged about the building that once was the Argentine army’s intelligence HQ, the first stop for many detainees on their way to be tortured and ‘disappeared’ (i.e. killed) during the last military dictatorship here. Such a sad, horrible period in Argentine history.
• On a lighter note, Jeff Barry took some nice pictures of a replica of a Greek temple in Parque Lezama, San Telmo, which reminds him of a Borges story. Although a whole lot of things do seem to remind him of Borges. Then again, he is one of the greatest writers of recent times, and Argentine at that, so he is worth being reminded of. Borges that is, not Jeff, although Jeff’s excellent blog is indeed worthy too of a reminder now and again.
• The Argentina Travel blog put up an excellent review with pictures of the barrio of La Boca in Buenos Aires, including a little about the mighty Boca Juniors football team and the colorful Caminito street - a staple pilgrimage for most tourists in Buenos Aires.
• Buenos Aires Weekly has some useful facts and lovely pictures of both the Obelisk and the Pink House - two tourist attraction stalwarts of Buenos Aires.
• Tango Cherie has a link to an article she had published about lovely old Line A of the Buenos Aires Subway system. It’s British built, don’t you know, just like me, though the similarity stops there. I wrote a dirty joke here, and then remembered that children might read this. I’m sure you can imagine it!

Tours, Trips & Museums in and around Buenos Aires

• Expat Argentina gives tips on where to stay and what to do in Tandil, a place for a potential weekend getaway from Buenos Aires, about 3 hours away from the city by car. I’d love to go just to see their replica of a large rock that once (rolled and..) broke. Rock and roll, man!
• Trendy Palermo Viejo brought to our attention, in three languages, a new museum about the equine sport of polo in Buenos Aires. Every time I see it, I am more and more impressed with a blog that writes in three languages. Shame on my monolingual excuse of a blog.

Buenos Aires Info, News & General Comments

• El Sol Ardiente, who will sadly shortly be leaving his beloved Buenos Aires, gave a ceremonial run down on his top ten and bottom ten things about the city. Then he remembered a couple of extra things, but I’ll let him off for that original oversight…he must have been getting emotional at the thought of waving goodbye to this wonderful country.
• Line of Sight does some inventive things with planned subte (subway) maps, and shows us combined plans for the way the Buenos Aires subte system will look. Eventually, hopefully…
• More trilingual trickery from Palermo Viejo, with the impressive news that Buenos Aires is the second best city in the world for shopping. Eat that Paris, languishing down in lowly ninth place. Yes, I mean YOU, the ‘Buenos Aires of Europe’.

Places to Stay in Buenos Aires

• GoodAirs posted about a rather costly new addition to the burgeoning ranks of boutique hotels in Palermo, in this case, one that would eat itself if it were a jar of dulce de leche.
• Back at the Argentina Travel Blog, they have a nice review of the Milhouse Youth Hostel, in Montserrat for all you dirty, greasy backpackers out there. For the record, I am also a dirty, greasy backpacker. I just got lost in Buenos Aires and someone tied me to this computer chair until I wrote everything there is to know about Buenos Aires. The 1000 monkeys in the next room are currently beating me in this task. But only just, and they do have an unfair advantage…they can touch type

Buenos Aires Restaurants, Food & Drink

• I wrote an excellent review of the California Burrito Company restaurant, if I don’t say so myself! Check it out if you are missing spicy food in Buenos Aires! That was my only post this week; consider my wrists slapped for being such a lazy sod…
• Blog Pasa en Buenos Aires (in Spanish), the funky city of Buenos Aires government weblog, declared what all foodies have been anxiously waiting for. Yes folks, the milanesa napolitana, pizza con faina, and sorrentinos are all now officially part of the patrimonial culture of Buenos Aires.
• In case you don’t know what all of those foods are; a milanesa is a thin piece of breaded meat (usually chicken or beef), with the napolitana part consisting of tomato sauce, ham, melted cheese and tomatoes places on top of it. Pizza con faina is pizza eaten with a slice of chickpea-based pie (faina) on top of it. Sorrentinos are massive raviolis, usually filled with cheese and ham. Beware, soon there will be legislation declaring these foods the only legal meal options in Buenos Aires restaurants. Sorry, no sushi for you…
• That last part was a blatant lie. Please keep reading even though I have now probably lost your trust.
• If you are still reading, good. If you are still reading AND like fish, check out Saltshaker’s review of the fish at the Lo Rafael restaurant in the barrio of Montserrat. And if you ever want to read reviews of fish restaurants in Buenos Aires, check out Saltshaker and not this blog because 1.) He knows more about good food than I do, and 2.) I am viciously allergic to fish. Kind of puts a large, death-related obstacle in my way…
• Beer. I love beer. I miss beer. Mmmmmm….beeeeeeer. This is my kind of post: Beer. Thanks to the Asado Argentina blog for…beer. This blog post was also brought to you by the power of beer (can you notice?)

Funny or Odd Things in Buenos Aires

• Diva, over at Buenos Aires through my eyes, made a couple of interesting observations this week (well, she does most weeks I guess). Firstly she noted that only 4 people turned up for a ‘flashmob’ event where free hugs were on offer, whereas over 3,000 people had brought the pillows to the ‘lucha de almohadas’ in order to beat the hell out of each other.
• She also raised a smile by relating the heart-warming story of an American who thought McDonald’s invented that most Argentine of sweets, the Alfajor de Maizena, because of its uncanny resemblance to a miniature hamburger. Sweet!
• What’s that you say? Ricky Martin was in Buenos Aires this week? Why do I always miss out on all the fun? Luckily for us, Robert Wright had the pocket Latino popster in his Line of Sight, and in the line of his camera lens too. And he even threw an interesting conspiracy theory into the post for good measure.
• Robert also wins the workaholic blogger of the week award. He also posted some excellent pictures of stencils in Buenos Aires, with translations and explanations. He has posted many of these before, this was in fact number 34 in the series! Search back through his blog if they interest you.
• Miss Tango In Her Eyes and her female friend are given some enthusiastic appreciation from the chicos in Puerto Madero, for the sum of their parts, which I suppose must be pretty darn impressive.
• Daily snapper Karine did some rapid fire posting of different Buenos Aires Kiosks, in all of their magazine-bling glory, here, there, and even round the corner from my fiancée’s apartment! Small world, indeed…
• In her other blog, Buenos Aires Weekly, Karine was one of the first to break the exciting news that Barbara Bush’s cell phone, stolen recently in San Telmo, had supposedly been put up for sale on Mercado Libre (the Latin American eBay), with a bargain starting price of AR$1000. Not bad when you consider it contained the phone numbers of both George W Bush AND Michael Jackson, offering the once in a lifetime opportunity to conduct a ’stupidest person on the face of the planet’ contest, in real time. Unfortunately, the offer was soon removed, surely because the current owner realized that was a chance that couldn’t be passed up.

My plea to Buenos Aires bloggers: please write less interesting posts in the coming week so I can get some sleep!

However, as I am a glutton for punishment, if I have missed an interesting Buenos Aires blog post this week, please post a link to it in the comments below. Thanks!