Going Local Travel

I’m in the middle of doing another article on Argentinian cinema and while researching I was reminded of this incredible scene from Oscar-winning El Secreto de Sus Ojos. I remember being blown away by this sequence when I first saw at the cinema in Buenos Aires. That first sweeping, overhead shot takes you by surprise [...]

Buenos Aires – overhyped and annoying? So says the New York Post in this recent article, What’s the deal with Buenos Aires? It’s an interesting take. The author, like many residents, has a love-hate relationship with the city, which is not something that often makes it into the travel press. So, are we ‘over’ Buenos [...]

“Argentina has already won the 2010 World Cup. It’s just that the rest of the world doesn’t know it yet,” so wrote blogger Gringo Starr recently in great post about Argentinian television. Their World Cup adverts are certainly something else. Here are a few worth sharing… (Sorry, there are no subtitles.) First, there’s this particularly [...]

I was in Miami on Sunday when Argentina played Mexico. I was told there was only one place for me to go: Normandy Isle, a northern part of Miami Beach known as Little Buenos Aires. My guidebook noted it was a big area for Argentinian immigrants, yet still nothing prepared me for what I found. [...]

Photo: Muma’s Cupcakes via Flickr Cupcakes are selling like …. well…  like hotcakes here in Buenos Aires. Spongy, little hotcakes. For proof, head down to Muma’s Cupcakes in Palermo.  I recommend nabbing one of the tables outside this Greenwich-Village-style store and watching the shoppers pass by.  My (unscientific) survey showed that 8 out of ten people [...]

This week someone told me about a B&B in Buenos Aires called Abode that prides itself on its ‘full English’ breakfast. “Can they get ‘baked beans?” I asked instantly, trying not to salivate too obviously. I was told that if they can’t get baked beans, the owner has honed her own recipe. Perhaps I should [...]

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I really can’t emphasis this point enough: Couchsurfing.com is fantastic for language learners. And not just for hosts/guests. It can be a godsend in your home town too and it needn’t involve a single couch. I have raved about Couchsurfing’s Buenos Aires forum before (see: Top three ways [...]

Photo: Flickr Creative Commons by Falling Sky I’ve been travelling a lot recently with a friend who was recently made redundant from giant drinks company InBev (Stella, Beck’s, Bud etc etc). It has become a tradition for us to order a local beer and hold our breath as we check the label. More often than [...]

Here it is. Proof that the tourist-versus-traveller debate has run its course (as if we needed it). It has now been incorporated into an American Express ad campaign. I just spotted it on a BA billboard.

I’ve been up north in Salta for the past week, partly for work, partly to accompany visiting family. It was certainly a diverse trip in terms of accommodation, spanning everything from one night’s couchsurfing in a lovely family house in an outlying suburb to a night in an ultra sophisticated boutique hotel in the city [...]