…and how to experience them anyway, on the cheap!

I guess I’ve always been something of a hostel person. Not out of choice mind you – if my economic situation had been rosier over the years, I’m sure I would have been living it up in the odd luxury, design, or boutique hotel now and again.

These days, my financial situation is little different, and still I wouldn’t be able afford to stay in such hotels. However, my current job as an independent tour guide here in Buenos Aires presents me with a glimpse over the other side of the fence, giving me a taste for the good stuff – so close, and yet so far.

However, as a tour guide, I also have to be quite resourceful on occasion. And so I have been able to come up with a few ways to enjoy the most wonderful, expensive Buenos Aires Hotels, but on a budget. Read on for my top five suggestions.

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‘Enjoying Buenos Aires’ Apartment Rental Services

From my point of view, when planning you trip to Buenos Aires and thinking about your accommodation options, it makes a hell of a lot of sense to throw short term apartment rentals into the mix.

Why? Well, when the choices are either to pay US$300 and upwards per night at a luxury or design hotel, versus the same price or less per week for a luxury apartment rental in Buenos Aires, with the same high levels of quality, comfort and design, all of a sudden the apartment option appears to be the most sensible option.

What’s that I hear you cry? Hotels have much higher levels of service and convenience that apartment rentals cannot offer? Well, I recently found out that there is another option to hotels, that matches them in these key areas, and yet beats them every time on value.

When my family came to visit me recently in Buenos Aires, I decided to look into apartment rental companies for them. A friend-of-a-friend knew of the owner of one such company, Enjoying BA, and recommended them highly to me. We ended up using them, and my family found both the quality of the apartment (in Recoleta) and level of service from the company to be of an extremely high standard. And so, here’s a nice review for them…

Enjoying BA is a relatively new player on the Buenos Aires Apartments scene, a small company that puts an emphasis on quality, not quantity, and so offers an extremely personalized service with their rentals – in fact, they even have their own concierge staff, whose mission is to make your stay in Buenos Aires the most comfortable, happy and interesting time possible.

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Buenos Aires Online Videos

Recently I discovered a great new website that has online videos for many different travel destinations around the world, called Geobeats. They have an excellent video section on Buenos Aires, with many videos from around the more famous barrios of Buenos Aires, including spots on hotels, restaurants and museums. All the videos of Buenos Aires are very professionally done and pretty informative, so I recommend checking them out.

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[12th - 25th March 2007]

Sorry for missing a week folks. Without wanting to go into the details, it’s been a crazy and stressful time. Anyway, on with the show we go, with my picks from the Buenos Aires blogosphere from the last two weeks, and I’m going to to try and keep my usually meandering descriptions quite brief this time round…

My favorite Buenos Aires blog posts from the past 2 weeks

• Tango Cherie made an interesting post on the subject of tango ‘taxi dancers’
• Nathan from Trip Trap notices some funny goings on in the Buenos Aires section of Craigslist
• Robert’s map of Recoleta Cemetery is ready, and it looks beautiful
  

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[5th - 11th March 2007]

For your information, I’m writing this week’s Buenos Aires blog roundup slowly in between itching the many mosquito bites that have ravaged my poor body. Unfortunately we have a bit of a mosquito invasion here in the city of Buenos Aires at the moment, although at least it looks (correct me if I’m wrong) like there is no risk of Dengue here in the city (unlike in parts of Buenos Aires province, and further north in Misiones). Still, the bites don’t half itch a lot, so apologies if my itching-triggered lack of concentration causes any errors in this roundup…

Buenos Aires Blog Posts of the Week

• This week’s top posts are about three new things that I’m pretty certain I will love. First up, Robert points out that a cafe has just opened up on the ground floor of the Palacio Barolo, a building that fascinates pretty much everyone, including Robert and I. It looks beautiful in Robert’s pictures, and despite the hefty, touristy prices (9 pesos for a cafe con leche with 3 medialunas!!!), I will definitely be checking it out in the near future
• Secondly, Dan from Saltshaker has been privy to a sneak preview of the food at an authentic Indian restaurant that will apparently be opening in Barrio Norte (Laprida and Charcas) later this month. It will be called Tandoor, and hopefully will provide the quality Indian food many of us expats have been missing since arriving in Buenos Aires
• Thirdly, Disco Shawn (still my vote for top blogger pseudonym of the year), introduces us to the Chilean indie musician Javiera Mena, who will be playing in Buenos Aires this Friday, March 16th at Club Niceto in Palermo Hollywood, during their indie music night Compass. From the tracks linked to in that blog post, her stuff sounds pretty good (I like my “cute, keyboard-driven pop goodness”, as Shawn describes it), so I will probably try to make my way to Compass this Friday

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