Suggestions: Argentina this APRIL-Sites, Food, Locations

[Rod Hagen]

Hello.  Several nights in BA on the Front side of the Trip staying in Palermo SoHo.  Restaurants, must-visit neighborhoods, and must-visit sites and experiences around Buenos Aires:  suggestions please.

Then seeing both sides, Argentina and Brazil (we have Visas),  of I. Falls   Tips?  Thoughts?

Then back to BA.  

Then several days in (Calafate / Chaltén) to see the glaciers and where most of my clothing comes from, lol.

Then a day or two in BA, then back to LA.

Suggestions and thoughts please!  

p.s. Is a day trip to Uruguay worth doiong?

[Rod Hagen]

No Argentina sites and Itinerary recommendations?  Should I move this to the " The Americas" forum?  I thought that was more for escort advice.  

[mike carey]

31 minutes ago, Rod Hagen said:

No Argentina sites and Itinerary recommendations?  Should I move this to the " The Americas" forum?  I thought that was more for escort advice.  

I'm not sure it would get more views in Americas than in the Travel Desk, but the Americas is where I would have put it. The Americas forum has 'providers' written on the tin (or at least implied by the descriptions of the other two geographic forums), but the forums in the Destinations section have gradually broadened in their scope, and having all travel experiences, carnal and otherwise, outside the US/CA region grouped in the same set of forums probably makes more sense for anyone planning travel. Our placement may vary, we may miss noticing which forum a thread is in, and we often won't move threads that have become fixtures where they are, so as well as perusing the relevant forum, an 'everywhere' search can be advisable if someone is looking for information about some exotic location.

Let's see if moving this generates more comments.

[MikeBiDude]

@Rod Hagen I loved Argentina. I was having a glass of Malbec and a Cuban cigar in a Buenos Aires hotel on about day #4 and told my partner “go home, sell the furniture and the house and meet me back here…I’m not leaving”. Yes I enjoyed it.

Yes to the falls, I was there 3 days and 2 nights. I’ve heard both sides are worth it, I didn’t get a chance to try that. 

I’m a carnivore, so all the beef - sometimes in interesting cuts we don’t see here at home - was amazing/delicious. Cheese appetizer with chorizo, great. I walked out of my many starred hotel on morning before hotel buffet breakfast, and found a hole-in-the-hole place selling empanadas. An assorted bag full of those became breakfast back in the room with room service coffee.

I’ve heard good things about the Mendoza area and the Malbec vineyards there…it’s not a quickie trip though. I regret not making time for it.

[BSR]

I love Palermo Soho!  I stayed in Montserrat for 3 months because it was close to my language school, but I spent most of my free time in Palermo Soho.  Super gay-friendly, chic yet unpretentious (my take), it’s a fantastic neighborhood.

If you’re a coffee-lover, ask a local to recommend a good café because most coffee in Buenos Aires  ranges from mediocre to downright awful.  On weekends I went to Vive Cafe, “next door” in Palermo Hollywood, a Colombian coffee shop where they do coffee right.

Most tourists do a tour of La Boca,  but I didn’t like it at all:  it has an interesting history but way too touristy for me.  I would recommend a tour of the Plaza de Mayo that covers the history of the widows and mothers of los desaparecidos, a profoundly sad period of Argentina’s history but critical to understanding the country.  If the weather’s nice, I would definitely visit the beautiful Japanese Garden.  I would also walk around Palermo Chico, the fanciest BA neighborhood where all the embassies are.

If you haven’t already picked your hotel, I would stay at the St. George in Puerto Iguazú, 20-25 minutes from the Falls:  modern rooms, great pool, terrific breakfast buffet included.  If you want to stay inside the national parks (plural because both the Brazilian and Argentine sides are national parks for their respective country), be prepared to pay megabucks.  The Melia on the Argentine side was sorely in need of a renovation yet was literally 10x the price of the St. George.  The Belmond on the Brazilian side is more like 12x the St. George, but at least it’s beautifully maintained.  I preferred the Brazilian side (a panoramic view of the entire Falls) over the Argentine side (walkways that are almost right on top of the Falls), but you gotta do both.  I highly recommend the boat ride along and under the Falls.  Just bring a change of dry clothes because you’ll get soaked.

I wish I could remember the place in Puerto Iguazú that serves 1-kilo ribeyes for just $50 (at the exchange rate then) because it lived up to all expectations for Argentine beef.  Since steakhouses were a lot more expensive in BA, I did an asado Airbnb experience.  Besides being less expensive, you learned about all the customs and traditions of an Argentine asado.

This might seem like a silly tip to Southern Hemisphereans like @mike carey and @José Soplanucas, but remember that the sun passes through the north sky, not the south.  My first day walking around, I checked Google Maps for the route to my destination, checked where the sun was, and started walking.  10 minutes later, I was baffled that I was walking in the wrong, opposite direction.  Duh! the sun does the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere.

Edited Friday at 03:02 PM by BSR
Typo, always a damn typo

[mike carey]

19 minutes ago, BSR said:

This might seem like a silly tip to Southern Hemisphereans like @mike carey and @José Soplanucas, but remember that the sun passes through the north sky, not the south.  My first day walking around, I checked Google Maps for the route to my destination, checked where the sun was, and started walking.  10 minutes later, I was baffled that I was walking in the wrong, opposite direction.  Duh! the sun does the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere.

Not silly, we learn the same lesson but in reverse. I'm used to the sun being in the north. Anyone travelling in the hemisphere they aren't familiar with faces the same realisation (the sun being north somehow seems 'natural' because a compass tells you north, the sun tells you north, that sort of thing). The thing about this that first struck me forcefully is that the sun moves across the sky clockwise in the north, so shadows also move clockwise. I first realised that when I sat near the edge of the shadow of a tree (in Omaha, as it happens), and rather than extend away from me as the day progressed, it moved the other way and I was in the sun in less than 20 minutes. I hadn't even considered it, I had just intuitively anticipated how it would move. Wrongly! As you grow up, you just 'know' how the world works.