Teatro Colón is considered one of the top five opera houses in the world. Its acoustics are so good that Pavarotti once said the only design flaw is the structure’s ability to reveal a singer’s every mistake. It occupies an entire city block, seating for 2,500, and was, until the Sydney Opera House opened in 1973,…

You’ll see long orderly queues for buses, cake shops, Western Union, newsagents, ATM’s and doctors, or anything really, so fall into line and behave yourself, because that’s how we do it here. Everything, unexpectedly, is very well ordered in BA (Suggestion of a British influence perhaps? – Ant). You’ll wait just a few minutes for…

We nipped over to Colonia del Sacramento with Claudia for her birthday and stayed at the wonderfully eclectic, verging on the eccentric (possibly bonkers) La Posadita de la Plaza, impeccably run by chatty, informative Brazilian-born Eduardo and his ever-vigilant attendant, Chiquiña, AKA Francisca de la Plaza. Chiquiña who, I might add is a street dog…

Some little-known fun facts about Uruguay that tickled our fancy: Uruguay was the first country in the world to legalise the sale of marijuana, which is widely and freely available – there are a few ‘head shops’ in Colonia and many cafes offering weed like it was a cup of tea Uruguay has no official…

Just 52k’s across the wide brown Río de la Plata lies the UNESCO World Heritage listed Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. It takes just one hour to cross on the huge Colonia Express catamaran (you can take your car) but you might as well have stepped back in time, possibly hundreds of years, as the…

We caught a crowded mid-morning Subte over to Palermo, emerging into summer heat and humidity with the Jardín Botánico right in front of us. On this surprisingly hot day, the lushness and coolness of this 19thCentury botanical garden were quite astounding and welcome, a total contrast to the frenetic pace of the urban jungle that…

We spent the morning in the colourful barrio of La Boca. Unfortunately, this place has become tourist-central (read # Tango) since our last visit eight years ago. What was then a relatively quiet, albeit thriving, working-class suburb, has become a mass tourist mecca, well, certainly around the colour-saturated El Caminito, a small street of brightly…

It was my birthday today and what better place to while away a reflective afternoon than a cemetery, though not just any old cemetery, the Cementerio de la Recoleta, ‘The City of the Dead’ of Buenos Aires. This place is quite marvellous in its ageing decrepitude, piles and piles (some literally piled on top of…

We had a wonderful Sunday morning walk across Puerto Madero and over to the Parque Natural y Reserva Ecologica Costanera Sur – bit of a mouthful, but a wonderful green wetland space on the shore of the Rio Plata. That’s Uruguay somewhere over there, our destination for later this week. Spring has well and truly…