Our dear friend Claudia has joined us in Buenos Aires for a couple of weeks. We’ve been somewhat starved of company since July so we weren’t sure how we’d cope – would we swamp her, would we kill her….? But no, it’s just nice to have company and show madam around this wonderful, intoxicating city…

Avenida 9 de Julio is the widest street in the world at 460 feet, with 18 lanes of traffic. It’s impossible to get a sense of just how enormous this thoroughfare is without being high up on some hotel or apartment roof-terrace or perhaps even in a helicopter – working on the latter. The sidewalks…

‘The Return of the Indian Raid’ by Argentinian artist Ángel della Valle is wide and majestical in its scale and presence in a room at the Bellas Artes Museum in Recoleta. We went looking for Argentine masters and this pretty much fits the bill as Argentina’s ‘first genuinely national work of art’ – specifically painted…

It’s estimated that over 20,000 ‘cartoneros’ now rummage through BA’s trash heaps and ‘dumpster dive’ their way around the barrios collecting re-cyclable rubbish to sell by weight. In recent years, the city government has also initiated a Ciudad Verde plan where registered cartoneros can collect a base salary for emptying the large bell-shaped recycling bins…

The vast majority of Porteños live in apartments, and Porteños love a dog, so for those who work a full day (most of ‘em), the dog walker is the go-to solution in BA. They’ll pick Alonzo (one of the more popular local dog names apparently) up in the morning and return him in the afternoon…

During the early 20th Century, Buenos Aires was booming and extremely wealthy, so much so that in 1914 Harrods of London decided to open their only foreign store right in the heart of the city. A super grand Belle Époque building on Calle San Martin standing proud on a corner position, crowned by an eight-storey cupola,…

The Guardian has ranked El Ateneo in Recoleta as the ‘second most beautiful bookshop in the world’ (so you know, Polare in Masstricht was first at the time, though now I see it’s closed… hmm, so where does that leave El Ateneo I wonder?). Apart from its enormous proportions – 2000 square metres – it…

The 2018 Youth Olympics opened here on the weekend with 250,000 people heading downtown for the opening ceremony* along the Avenida 9 de Julio. Sadly, the budget was slashed 40% in recent months, perhaps dulling this first time Olympics for Argentina, albeit the lesser known Youth Games. The IOC president Thomas Bach, who opened things…

The San Telmo Sunday market is a huge draw for both locals and tourists, so it gets packed, especially on weekends, and on a 25-degree Spring Sunday afternoon like today. Wonderfully warmed by the sunshine you’re shuffling along at a snail’s pace, so plenty of time to peer and poke around in the jammed curio…

On the other side of Puerto Madero is one of BA’s greatest and most unexpected treasures, the 865-acre wetland park, the Reserva Ecológica Costanera Sur. This is an incredible resource to have so close to a city of 13 million, packed with 314 species of birds, 23 species of reptile including, surprisingly, caimans and iguanas,…