Site names top destinations for single men

Barcelona, Buenos Aires and Miami top a list of 29 cities that attract single men on the go.

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Site names top destinations for single men

Five-star stays for bargain prices

The latest Hotel Price Index from Hotels.com shows that travellers could stay in five-star hotels at 20 cities around the world for less than $200 per night. Included in the destinations were Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Cape Town and Chicago.

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Five-star stays for bargain prices

Ernesto Sábato, Novelist and Argentina’s Conscience, Dies at 99

Mr.

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Ernesto Sábato, Novelist and Argentina’s Conscience, Dies at 99

Parramatta reaches for the stars

PARRAMATTA wants to pit itself against international cities such as Rome, Shanghai and Buenos Aires, to lure movie-makers to use it as a backdrop.

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Parramatta reaches for the stars

Parramatta reaches for the stars

PARRAMATTA wants to pit itself against international cities such as Rome, Shanghai and Buenos Aires, to lure movie-makers to use it as a backdrop.

The rest is here:
Parramatta reaches for the stars

Famous Cities in Argentina

Argentina is among the countries that one can think of whenever Latin America becomes the subject of a conversation. The country has a rich culture, many tourist attractions, and has well-known cities that exude beauty and splendor.

Perhaps the most famous city, Buenos Aires is the capital of Argentina and the 3rd largest city in all of Latin America. It has a good climate which you would find appealing. The city has a so-called division wherein the northern parts are known to be the stylish neighborhood belonging to the upper class, while the southern part is generally known as the working class.  Buenos Aires has a host of historic places such as the Plaza de Mayo, Casa Rosada, Catedral Metropolitana and Manza de las Luces which was built in 1730 and considered as Buenos Aires’ oldest church.

Cordoba is another famous city in Argentina. It has preserved the old colonial structure evident of the influence of Jesuits. The city has seven universities and you can always expect huge number of students going to and fro on the streets. In 2006, it received the award as being the Cultural Capital of the Americas. Fiat and Renault have also made the city as their industrial base.

Mendoza is also one of the well-known cities in Argentina. The structures of the buildings and houses are somewhat different from other cities since residents of this city invested in earthquake-proof buildings. This is due to the earthquake that hit their city in 1861 which killed a third of the population. Since this is a very interesting city, you might like to visit this place if you are in the process of enjoying a Chile tour.

Another great city in Argentina is San Carlos de Bariloche. This is also located near lakes and has been known as the party capital of Patagonia. The natural beauty all around it can always grant you a breathtaking view. You can also immerse yourself in the loveliness of this city if you are on a Chile tour.

These are only a few of the cities that Argentina is famous for. Considering that the country is situated just right beside another famous place – the Chile country, you can always expect to have a lot of cities where you can go and have some fun.

San Telmo Buenos Aires

This morning, after buying a bag of ground coffee at a Chinese grocery store that blasts Asian rock-rap and is adorned with golden, ceramic kitties, I started thinking of San Telmo’s quirkiness.  This is not an uncommon thought; no, the realization occurs to me quite often.  Take yesterday, for instance, when I was walking home from the subway and saw a man pedaling a stationary bicycle parked on the sidewalk, quite in the middle of foot traffic.  That is not the end of it, though.  The stationary bike was powering a knife-sharpener that spun on top of the man’s handlebars.  The man was pedaling his heart out while holding a very intimidating-looking knife blade on top of the spinning sharpener.  I hustled past him as I morosely imagined him losing his grip and the knife flying through the air, perhaps soaring onto (or rather, into) an innocent bystander.  Later in the day I wondered if I had fabricated such a ludicrous memory.  But, no, as ridiculous as it is, I am certain that I did indeed walk (run) past a knife-sharpening exercise-biking man.

 

I love San Telmo.  All of its quirkiness makes it an inimitable neighborhood.  Its just-around-the-corner local from Microcentro keeps it within walking distance of all the Buenos Aires hot-spots, but its distinct barrio borders separate it from the city-center-hub. Once Calle Florida turns into Calle Peru and thus marks one’s entrance into San Telmo, you notice the architecture fade from modern to colonial, from classy stone and brick facades to muted pink and green building fronts.  The blocks have a feel of Cuba during the Godfather II era, with classic architecture painted in bright Latin flavors.  The shops are old-fashioned, with the merchants standing outside greeting potential patrons, spending hours dusting the storefront windows, meticulously keeping track of their wares.  Artisans who can not afford their own shops spread blankets out on the cobblestone of Calle Peru and sell their hand-woven pashminas, hand-sculpted bracelets, and hand-carved wooden tea cups.  On Sundays the entire avenue of Defensa is taken over by these artisans, and you can find everything from wooden desks to handy kitchen items to beautifully embroidered dresses at this San Telmo craft fair.

 

The restaurants and cafes, bars and bakeries of San Telmo significantly contribute to my desire to live in no other barrio in Buenos Aires.  Whereas in Recoletta, the best deal on pizza I could find is one mozzarella pizza and six empanadas for 29 pesos, around the corner is a hole-in-the-wall pizza/beer joint offering a liter of Quilmes and a mozzarella pizza for 17 pesos!  On the busiest streets of the business districts, coffees are sold for 7 pesos per cup, whereas the San Telmo diners serve you a glass of espresso and three media-lunas (delicious croissants) for only 4 pesos and 50 centavos.  Not to mention that the wait-staff itself in San Telmo will make you feel right at home, as they will not let you leave without telling them your reasons for being in Buenos Aires, wishing you luck during your visit here, and insisting that you come back again.  Take Gaston for example, waiter and host of Limi-T Wine Bar, which really isn’t a wine bar at all, but rather a dive café located on the corner of Venezuela and Chacabuco.  My boyfriend and I frequented Limi-T once, a dining experience where Gaston brought out 80’s and 90’s rock cd’s along with our coffee orders, asking us to please choose an album for him to play.  We chose David Bowie, and seconds later Limi-T was filled with the sound of Major Tom’s count-down, and Gaston was smiling proudly at us from the bar.  Before leaving, he gave us his business cards and kissed us both on the cheek.  Now, even though we have only eaten there once, every time we walk past the corner of Venezuela and Chacabuco, we always wave through the window, and Gaston flies out to give us a hug and check up on our stay.  He makes us feel as though this is our home, too.  And right now, San Telmo really is a wonderful home.    

The City Of Puerto Madero

Crossing Avenida Paseo Colon, marking one’s departure from San Telmo and subsequent entrance into Puerto Madero is like crossing into a whole new city.  Puerto Madero streets are somehow quiet, as if portenos have mercifully agreed to a traffic code of conduct in just this one barrio.  The sidewalks are a wide contrast to the normally narrow streets of Buenos Aires, and the broad avenue lanes are divided by strips of grass illuminated by soft lamps in the evenings.  A cobblestone bridge carries urban foot travelers across a view of the river that is a refreshingly open breather in this magnificently jam-packed city.  The river sparkles in-between its cement dams and giant, colorful cranes adorn the bridge, seeming to keep an eye on the barrio.

 

The cranes remind one of the construction required to make Puerto Madero what it is today.  Built in the 1890’s as the city’s leading port, it was abandoned only a decade after its completion due to the quickly changing shipping industry.  For an entire century, the area was more or less unclaimed, making it a no-man’s-land of decay and degradation.  Finally, in the 1990’s, the city laid claim to Puerto Madero. The old, empty, and decaying warehouses were renovated and remodeled into coveted apartment lofts, raved-about restaurants, classy hotels, and posh office buildings.

 

Crossing Avenidas Aime Paine, Juana Manso, Olga Cossettini, and Julieta Lanterri will make you wonder at the feminine names of the avenues.  In a machismo metropolis where the streets carry the legacies of the country’s masculine heroes, from Bolivar to San Martin, the gender difference in this barrio is a noticeable one.  And it is all on purpose—Puerto Madero renovation plans included renaming each street after an Argentine feminist.  This barrio really is cutting edge, a model of progress and revitalization.

 

Passing by all these female-inspired streets will eventually lead you to the Ecological Reserve, a stunning display of the power of nature.  This nature preserve is a peaceful sanctuary of rolling fields wrapped by inlaid hiking and biking trails, flocked with birds, wildflowers, trees, shrubs, and other exotic wildlife that is hard to come by in such an urban and densely populated city.  The reserve itself used to be a concrete junkyard, a graveyard preserving the remains of failed attempts at development.  Years of abandonment let nature walk back in the door, and soon enough, She took over, to the point where the past evidence of development dumping is invisible.  I could walk in the Ecological Reserve every day, never tiring of the fresh air and beautiful views of the estuary. 

 

As you leave the Ecological Reserve and walk back along the avenues, past the Hotel Madero, past the Universidad Catolica, past the dozens upon dozens of other boutiques, inns, and cafes, you will find it hard to believe that this trendy, clean, and vibrant neighborhood lay in ruins a mere 15 years ago.  It is an amazing feat, and a complete testament to the city of Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires Catching the Collectivo

Monedas.  Some may say your days in Buenos Aires are characterized by a struggle to find coins.  Yes, that’s right—coins, monedas, something that in the US piles up in our pockets and the bottoms of our purses and on the floors of our cars.  We don’t really count it as money.  I for one think I got something for free if I paid with coins in the US.  But no, in Buenos Aires, they are indeed a precious metal. 

The collectivo is the bus system in Argentina’s capital.  In a city with 14 million people and nearly as many neighborhoods, the collectivo is shall we say, crucial.  However, although its name may suggest otherwise, it is a privatized bus system.  Yes yes, freedom to choose and all of that, but let’s put it this way: there are literally hundreds of bus lines in the city, different companies pulling the strings on different lines, each company with its own idea of a good route.  And each route was unimaginably completely undocumented until the arrival of the GUIA. 

Ten years ago, the GUIA was born, ingeniously invented to document each collectivo route into one guide.  Landing in Buenos Aires and deciphering the collectivos without a GUIA would be virtually impossible if one so choose to also pursue other activities.  This guide lists all of the streets within the city limits of Buenos Aires, from Acassuso to Zuviria, in the first pages of the booklet.  Proceeding the listed avenues comes a map of the city, spread out piece by piece over 36 pages.  Each page, or 1/36th of the entire city map, is further broken down into 24 squares.  Each square is accompanied by a list of buses that frequent that area, which is 5 city blocks.  However the collectivo list does not tell you the exact stopping point of the bus.  Therefore, to find a certain bus, you must walk that square area of 5 blocks, and hope to find a marked spot, or perhaps a queue of public transportation veterans waiting with resigned helplessness at an unmarked but somehow designated point. 

To make things just a little bit more adventurous, the routes are subject to change at any time the various owners of the collectivo lines so choose.  Therefore, the bus that the GUIA points to for your destination square may have changed its route, may have voted your square off the island.  But, the best you can do is hope that doesn’t happen, and wait for it to come.  The good news is that because bus drivers see traffic lanes as suggestions, there’s really no way you could miss a passing bus, as it is usually the only automobile in three lanes. 

Okay, so imagine that you have miraculously found the stop, and the route has not changed, and the bus has arrived.  You hop on as the doors fly open and the bus driver removes his foot from the gas for a generous 20 seconds.  You tell the driver “noventa”, because unless you are going outside of Buenos Aires, it only costs 90 centavos to go anywhere within the city.  The bus driver starts the meter, and you drop your coins in.  And here is where we go back to the aforementioned issue of monedas.

In an act of saving grace, the city of Buenos Aires has decreed that all bus rides within the city are 90 centavos, as I said before.  The buses do not accept bills, only coins.  And there is a coin shortage, to say the least, within the Capital Federal.  When I say there is a coin shortage, I can not adequately convey the off-kilter supply and demand balance without examples.  Take, for instance, a trip to the grocery store.  I gather my groceries into a basket and head to check out.  The cashier tells me the total is $20.80.  I hand her $22.00.  She looks at the money with such a look of disapproval that she barely stops short of wagging her forefinger at me.  “Do you have 80 cents?” she asks me.  Do I have 80 cents?  Just luxuriously jingling in my pocket?  And would I willingly hand it over to a grocery store? ”No,” I say without apologies.  This is getting ridiculous.  I see in the till that there are only a few coins, but enough to give me my 20 cents change.  Let’s just think about that for a second.  She asks me for 80 cents, when she only owes me 20.  Where is the logic?  Just as I am once again asking where the hell are all the monedas, the tiller opens up a locked drawer underneath her register, and I see the sparkling, rolling hills of hundreds of coins.  She sourly hands me two 10 cent pieces, as if parting with these coins is a major infringement on her day.  On my way back home from the grocery store, I take note of the dozens of kiosk and shop store window-fronts that warn customers that they “have no monedas.”  Don’t even try it, they seem to say.

For this shortage, there are various rumors.  One of my favorite explanations is that apparently, the metal that composes the coins is actually more valuable than the monetary value of the coin itself.  Therefore, some shrewd swindlers stash away these coins, melt them down, and sell the metal on the black market.  Perhaps an even more ridiculous, but no less accepted, rumor is that the Chinese mafia—yes, specifically the Chinese mafia—hoards the monedas until there are desperate shortages, at which point the Asian gangsters sell the coins for a hefty profit.  I’m pretty sure that’s the real reason. 

So, as if finding the appropriate bus is not hard enough, the Chinese mafia has now made paying for the bus an equal struggle.  In a city that never sleeps with a subway system that closes at 10 pm, you do what you can to get to a bus, and you do what you have to to pay for it.  When I walk down the street, I can spot the glint of the sun against a dropped coin from yards away.  And I will knock people over to be the first to reach that fallen treasure.  Precious metals and unpredictable routes.  A day in BsAs.  The upside of all this is that taking the bus now is really the only thing I need to do to feel as though I have led an accomplished day.

Visiting Cordoba

The second largest city in the country of Argentina is the city of Cordoba. Established in the fourteenth century, and home to one of the first universities on the continent, today Cordoba is called “la docta” for its many educational opportunities. During the 1950s the city faced industrialization programs led by the government, which has left it today as a leader in the motor vehicle and software industries as well.

 

Visitors to the city can view many of the city’s well preserved buildings dating from the 1600s, though the industrialization period did expose some structures to the affects and interference of modern architecture and construction. Luckily entire blocks are now under preservation and protection and the city continues to retain its beautiful and antique charm.

 

In additions to the dozens of historic buildings open to the public, there are also numerous museums, some belonging to the colleges and universities that fill the city, and others simply focusing on a specific subject or collection. There are currently museums of modern art, historic Latin American Indian collections, science museums devoted to the prehistory of the continent as well as the other sciences. There are technology museums dedicated to the industrial focus of the city as well as those educating children about technology. The history museums of the city could easily fill a few days’ itineraries and include everything from art history, to coin collections and a review of Cordoba’s fascinating past.

 

Because the city was built for scholarly pursuits there remain many green and open spaces where the pace and noise of a thriving city can be easily escaped. The two million residents of Cordoba have over twelve large gardens and public parks to visit. Some regularly stage craft or artisan fairs, and some make all sorts of family activities available each weekend.

 

Additionally, because Cordoba is still a college town it offers fantastic cultural venues both day and night. There are many excellent theaters and clubs, including annual festivals in the theater and cinematic arts. There are some major sporting events held in the stadiums built by some of the universities and regularly scheduled games take place throughout the year.

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