[22nd - 28th January 2007]

Well, it’s been quite a busy week here in Buenos Aires blogland. Firstly, my blog now has a new name, with the word ‘Argentina’ replacing the redundant ‘Travel’. This has already seen a marked increase in people finding the site by searching “Buenos Aires, Argentina”, so it wasn’t such a bad decision after all

Secondly, quite a few of us Buenos Aires bloggers only went and got mentioned in Clarin, the main daily newspaper here in BA. But more of that to come in the roundup, so on with the show…

Things to See and Do in Buenos Aires

• As I seem to keep saying every week, Karine has once again posted some excellent photos of Buenos Aires landmarks, including Plaza Congreso, with a view of the lovely twin red domes of the La Inmobiliaria building & the exquisite Palacio Barolo beyond them, a quaint little antiques shop in San Telmo, some of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo doing their thing in the plaza, the spooky old University of Engineering building in Recoleta (just round the corner from my new apartment!), and in Buenos Aires Province, some crazy pictures of the packed beaches at Mar del Plata – so that’s where all the people in the city disappeared to this month!
• Argentina’s Travel Blog sends one of it’s legion of writers to investigate the many Lakes and Parks of Palermo
• Ken goes shopping in Once, which is recommended if, like me (and I guess Ken too!), your clothing purchase decisions are based more on necessity and price than style or fashion!
• I got off my arse and wrote a little something about the beautiful San Pedro Gonzalez Telmo Church in, you guessed it, the barrio of San Telmo

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[11th - 17th December 2006]

It’s back…what is surely already your favorite weekly round-up of the Buenos Aires blogosphere…putting aside the small issue that it is the only weekly round-up of the Buenos Aires blogosphere! We made it to a 2nd week, which is a mild surprise because last week’s instalment took so long to write due some heavy blogging in the Buenos Aires area.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint, there were less relevant Buenos Aires blog posts to report on this week, but still a fair amount for you to get through, partly thanks to my hyperactive blogging this week. Here they are…

Buenos Aires Sightseeing

• As I was saying in this week’s post on Caminito, there is more to La Boca than touristy tack, and these photos reveal some of the gritty modern reality of this famous barrio.
• I wrote a post about the history and modern day use of the wonderful El Mercado de Abasto building.
• All about El Cabildo, the government house during colonial times in Buenos Aires.
• The Buenos Aires Japanese Gardens are a nice place to relax in an oasis of Zen tranquillity. The Buenos Aires city government (blog in Spanish) also notes that the gardens are in a top ten list of the best places to read in peace in Buenos Aires, along with the Botanical Gardens and Plaza San Martin.

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On the corner of Don Pedro de Mendoza & Del Valle Iberlucea, La Boca

Note – if you would like to book a private guided walking tour in Buenos Aires that includes a visit to Caminito and the surrounding area of La Boca, please click on the following link and scroll down to the section on our San Telmo & La Boca tour: BUENOS AIRES PRIVATE TOURS

Quite possibly the biggest mainstream tourist hotspot in Buenos Aires, the colorful Caminito street in the otherwise run down barrio of La Boca is often looked down upon as commercial, touristy, tacky, tango-ey rubbish by locals and travel guides alike.

However, I really think it is just trendy to say such things, because this small road and the immediate area around it do in fact have both an interesting history and the opportunity for taking some great photos, even though you will probably be surrounded by several American and Japanese tourists also happily snapping away before they quickly hop back onto their tour bus.

But give Caminito a chance! You might just like it…

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Corrientes 3247 (between Aguero & Anchorena), Abasto

[Open 10am to 10pm daily]

Largest Shopping Center in Buenos Aires

The Abasto shopping center is probably the one mall in Buenos Aires that has at least something to appeal to all people, of all ages, although apart from its wonderful 1930s Art Deco architecture you could not really argue that it is an authentic Buenos Aires experience.

As far as shopping goes, it is full of mainstream clothes stores, and it boasts over 250 brands to choose from, including major labels like Nike, Lacoste and YSL. As I said, not all that authentic an experience, but at least the building itself really is quite beautiful (see right), and is on a very large scale – it is the biggest mall in the city of Buenos Aires (Unicenter, the biggest mall in Argentina, is outside the city limits).

This area of Abasto also has played a major role in the social and tango history of Buenos Aires, and for those reasons alone it is worth a quick visit, even if you are not interested in the shops inside, which will probably be quite similar to the ones that you can find back home. And there is also a range of things to see and do inside the center, which can be found near the end of this blog post.

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Plaza Dorrego (Corner of Defensa and Humberto Primo), San Telmo

Buenos Aires ‘Must Do’

Spending a Sunday in and around Plaza Dorrego is one of the few things that ranks as a ‘must do’ sightseeing attraction for visitors to Buenos Aires. On the seventh day of the week, when the rest of the city is resting, the city closes much of neighboring Defensa street to traffic, and this part of San Telmo explodes into a mass of around 8,000 people, locals and tourists alike. They come to peruse antiques and knickknacks, watch the outdoor tango dancing and other performers, sit for a coffee or beer outside a classic old cafe, or just aimlessly wander around the interesting chaos. This, more or less, is the Plaza Dorrego Sunday market, also known as the “Feria de San Pedro Telmo”.

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