[26th February - 4th March 2007]

Well, here we are at week number 13 of my (late as usual) Buenos Aires blog roundup. 13, lucky for some? Well, if you like blogs and Buenos Aires, this may indeed be your lucky day! I can’t believe it’s been a quarter of a year already since I started to write these roundups. I guess time flies when you are reading blogs all the time rather than doing any real work…

Buenos Aires Blog Posts of the Week

• He doesn’t post very often these days (I know – pot… kettle… black), but when El Expatriado springs into action, you sure know you will be in for some interesting and/or useful reading. And very useful indeed (for those laptop users among us) is this list of free Wi-Fi hotspots in Buenos Aires
• Yanqui Mike put in a sterling effort with his post commemorating the 150th anniversary of the death of Almirante Guillermo Brown (Bill to his mates) this Saturday, which saw a contingent come from County Mayo in the Republic of Ireland to lay wreaths on his grave in Recoleta cemetery (you can’t miss Brown’s, it’s the big Irish-green column with a ship on top). I would have liked to be there, as not only is Brown also one of my favorite figures in Argentine history (see Mike’s post to understand why), but also my mum is from that part of Ireland, and I spent a good few summer holidays growing up in and around Mayo… so I guess I feel an extra association with Brown… not that I’m thinking of running off and founding another country’s navy any time soon
• Robert proves that around every corner in Buenos Aires there are still interesting discoveries to be made. This time he made a visit to the Iglesia de San Juan Bautista, just off Av. de Mayo, and happened upon a beautiful cloister where soldiers from both sides were buried during the (unsuccessful) British invasions of Buenos Aires during 1806 and 1807. Shame the church authorities wouldn’t let him in to take some better pics

Read the rest of this entry »

[12th - 18th February 2007]

This roundup post is late, as usual, so no messing around this week folks… let’s just get straight into the Buenos Aires, Argentina linky goodness from last week…

Buenos Aires Argentina Blog Posts of the Week

• Matt Bites, who appears to be thoroughly enjoying a holiday in Buenos Aires and the general Rio de la Plata area, penned a mouthwatering review of the La Cabrera parrilla in Palermo Viejo, one of the best places to eat meat in BA. Although… drinking Torrontes instead of Malbec wine as an accompaniment to steak… don’t they kill for such crimes against Argentine sensibilities round these parts?
• Matt Chesterton, editor of the Time Out guides to Buenos Aires, has been writing a fantastic series about hotels in Buenos Aires… my runaway favorite has to be his post on classic hotels in BA, mainly for his wedding night anecdote from the Hotel Castelar.. seriously, a must read!
• I couldn’t find a third Matthew to make this a ‘Mattrick’ of top blog posts (were there any other Matts writing about BA this week?)… so we’ll have to make do with the closest I could find…a Marc. He recently announced on Asado Argentina that he has launched a new photo blog of southern Argentina. OK, so it’s not Buenos Aires… but from time to time we city dwellers need to be reminded that real life does exist outside of the metropolis, and his first few pictures provide some beautiful examples of that fact

Read the rest of this entry »

Presidente Roberto M. Ortiz 1827 (between Guido and Quintana), Recoleta

[Also has a downtown pub location at Paraguay 428]

The Buller brewpub in Recoleta is one of the few places in Buenos Aires where you can get a proper pint of beer. By ‘proper’, I mean two things. Firstly, served in a traditional pint glass. That is key. Beer just tastes better that way. But secondly, and far more importantly, the BEER MUST TASTE GOOD, and not like the mass-produced cats piss that is served in the majority of bars across the world, and is especially prevalent in Argentina, where Quilmes, high on preservatives and additives but low on any kind of taste whatsoever, prevails.

In fact, at first look it seems so difficult to get decent beer at a reasonable price in Buenos Aires, that you might just give up. I know I did… I tried for a while, then decided I would just have to forget about this great drink that is so close to my heart for the duration of my stay in Argentina. But then I took a trip home to the UK at Christmas, including a pilgrimage to the Fuller’s brewery (makers of the finest beer on the face of the planet), and reignited my passion for the real drink of the gods. And so, once back in Buenos Aires, I decided to start a series of posts that will go under the grandiose name of…

The Great Buenos Aires Beer Hunt

I mean, what would life be like without good beer? It just doesn’t bear thinking about…

Read the rest of this entry »

Libertad 1078 (between Av. Santa Fe & Marcelo T de Alvear), Recoleta

Piola is an international chain of pizzerias, originally hailing from Treviso, Italy, but now with many restaurants in the USA, Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Argentina. However, it seems as they spread far and wide, they didn’t lose much of the supposed stereotypical Italian arrogance on arriving in Buenos Aires. Here’s a little example from the Piola website:

“Piola opened in Argentina in April 1993, arriving directly from Treviso, Italy. It revolutionized the Buenos Aires gastronomy to such a point that the local press and industry speak of a before and after PIOLA in Buenos Aires.”

Hmmmm… Suffice to say, I’ve never heard anyone here speak of such a sea change in Buenos Aires cuisine. Yes, it’s all well and good that they are so sure about the groundbreaking quality of their food… but more pertinently, does the Pizza stand up to stringent Buenos Aires Argentina Guide testing? Stay tuned to find out, Pizza fans…

Read the rest of this entry »

[29th January - 4th February 2007]

Sorry I’m late with the Buenos Aires blog roundup this week guys… I have been busy as usual, and at the weekend wrote what would have been one of my best blog posts of all time (seriously!), only for my PC to crash just before I clicked publish, losing the whole thing! I was so annoyed that I couldn’t bring myself to try posting something again until now… that will learn me for not updating to the new version of WordPress (my blogging software), which apparently has an auto-save feature. Silly me.

Anyway, onto the blog roundup, which this week inaugurates a new feature… a section for my most favorite posts of the week!

Buenos Aires Blog Posts of the Week

• I just loved Ken’s description of the dog walkers in Buenos Aires and the accompanying picture, though not quite as much as I love to see the dog walkers with their huge packs of mutts each morning as I walk to catch the bus to work
• I always like a good post about the prevalence of mullets in Buenos Aires. And Isabelle Lagarde’s blog entry in this field certainly doesn’t disappoint
• OK, so Buenos Aires isn’t Paris. But it does have some lovely Parisian-esque domes, which came into Robert’s ‘Line of Sight’ this week. I hope he didn’t get a crick in his neck…

Read the rest of this entry »