Buenos Aires: Four Days, Four Stories

What began in chaos turned into a celebration of Argentina’s food, warmth and effortless charm — proof that even the most delayed journeys can lead to perfect adventures.

It’s always been a goal of mine to visit South America, but I’ve never managed it until now. Somehow, we acquired enough Avios points for a return flight to Argentina and so booked a trip that would allow us to explore the country — from the vast, bustling capital city, south to the glaciers and north to the hot, humid waterfalls.

This week we started the journey, and I kept a diary: my own anthology of travel tales. Unfortunately, the collection opened with delayed flights and missing luggage, but it quickly morphed into steak and fine wine. Buenos Aires, it turns out, rewards patience with Malbec and charm in roughly equal measure.

Day One: Lost Luggage, Found Malbec

Waterfront view of Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires, showing modern high-rise apartment buildings along the yacht-filled docklands, with a pedestrian promenade in the foreground under clear blue skies — Buenos Aires’ transformed docklands meet modern luxury.

The journey began with more drama than you really want when flying. British Airways cancelled, rebooked, and generally conspired to keep us in Heathrow longer than any sane traveller should be. By the time we reached Buenos Aires, my bags had apparently decided to see the world on their own schedule. But a bottle (or two) of Argentine red at, officially, one of the world’s best restaurants did wonders for morale. I’m not saying wine solved everything, but it certainly softened the edges. Somewhere between The Salt Path on the in-flight entertainment and late-night Buenos Aires jet lag, I started to think this trip was worth the chaos.

Read more about the day on my Blipfoto diary.

Day Two: Ferry Nice Day Out!

Cobblestone street in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay, with colonial-era buildings, a white lighthouse visible in the distance, bare winter trees, and parked motorcycles under clear blue skies — Lighthouse photobombs a perfectly good street scene.

As the second proper day dawned, we headed for the Río de la Plata and a day trip across to Uruguay. The Buquebus terminal was far slicker than the internet had led us to believe, and passport control was remarkably more efficient than the tales you can read elsewhere. Colonia del Sacramento turned out to be all cobbles, calm and colonial charm — the sort of place that exists to make Instagram jealous (but I was so taken with the place I didn’t post a picture). We paid for the hotel pick-up, only to discover later it would have been fine (and cheaper) to walk. Consider this information a small donation to your travel guide. In the evening, we discovered the vibrant energy of Avenida Corrientes and Buenos Aires’ theatre district. And no, we didn’t queue for tickets for a midnight performance, but next time we just might.

The diary chronicles our day trip to Uruguay.

Day Three: Buses, Bonhomie and Buenos Aires’ Brightest Streets

Colourful buildings in El Caminito, Buenos Aires, featuring vibrant blue, yellow, red, and green corrugated metal facades, with life-sized tango dancer figures on balconies, outdoor café seating with red chairs, and tourists exploring the famous street — Corrugated iron never looked this fabulous.

We gave our feet a break and let the tourist bus do the work — an unexpectedly efficient way to see a city that sprawls as confidently as Buenos Aires. From the leafy calm of Palermo to the bright murals of La Boca, we ticked off the postcard highlights without ever breaking a sweat. Every stop offered something different: the solemn beauty of Recoleta Cemetery, the grandeur of the Teatro Colón, and the kind of boulevards that make you wonder if Paris might have borrowed a few ideas from here rather than the other way around. It was the perfect combination of adventure and sightseeing, capped off with a tango show that had enough energy to power Greater Buenos Aires’ ten million people.

The diary has more about the visit to El Caminito, Recoleta Cemetery, the Colón Theatre and La Ventana.

Day Four: The Fire, the Feast and the Fifteenth Course

Chef slicing perfectly cooked medium-rare steak on a wooden board at Fogón Asado's chef's counter in Buenos Aires, with plated portions of grilled meat and vibrant yellow sauce arranged on white plates in the foreground — Front-row seats to carnivore’s dream show.

The finale of this leg of the trip came, appropriately, with fire. My birthday dinner turned into a culinary marathon that blurred the line between “meal” and “endurance event”. Fifteen courses later, I concluded that Argentine chefs possess brilliance, an ability to withstand the heat of a volcano, and a slight disregard for the human capacity to eat perfectly cooked meat. Earlier, there was time for a little history: the grandeur of the El Ateneo bookshop, the stories of Plaza de Mayo, and a reminder that Argentina’s beauty is matched only by its complexity.

The diary for the fourth day of our adventure is on Blipfoto.

We ended the first leg of this trip full — of food, of stories, and of gratitude for every minor inconvenience that somehow made the whole thing better. Because if travel teaches anything, it’s that a lost suitcase is just the first chapter of a much better tale.

Tomorrow we’re heading south. There’s so much more to explore in Buenos Aires. We’ll be back, briefly, next week.

Forty

There’s always a ‘they’ and, in this case, ‘they’ say life begins today. If that’s true then quite what the past forty years have been I have no idea. For some reason that I have yet to understand, turning forty is a point when people look back. They don’t do it so much at 39 and, I imagine, not so much at 41 either.

Beginning?

Still, maybe it’s not such a bad thing, this looking backwards. Perhaps looking back helps, as someone once said, refreshes the eye, “to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward”. Or perhaps it’s just what we do.

A potted geography would look like this: around forty years ago I arrived in this world in a place that wasn’t too far from the wooden planks that made up the place Wigan Pier would have been had it really been a pier. I was too early for it to have been the tourist attraction it became. As I entered the second decade of my life – around the point they thought they should have a pier tourist attraction and the moment the new romantics took over the music scene – you would have still found me in Wigan (where, I was reminded earlier this week, Spandau Ballet’s To Cut A Long Story Short was the first record I will admit to buying). We got used the fact Kajagoogoo’s Limahl, who was a local boy, was being played on the radio and it was somewhere around this time that I became fascinated by the voices coming out of the radio. By the middle of the decade we lived in Shropshire, where my first proper paid job was for BBC radio there, and by the end of it I was in studying in Scotland. At the height of the Britpop 90s I’d moved to London, trying to make advertising systems work, first for those voices in the radio box and then for the emerging online industry, and that’s where I’ve been ever since. I entered my 30s as we took in the new millennium, realised that I was lucky to live in the most vibrant place in the world, and was working with computing systems all days long. Like father, like son, huh?

The geography provides the markers on our own life-map but, of course, it’s the people who provide the highs (and, I guess the lows) which make up the contours on our map. And, while I take my moment to reflect I want to say ‘”thank you” to everybody who has made the last forty years so wonderfully rich.

When I was a child I imagined you would get to this point in life and you’d be able to write your own life’s acknowledgements, as though life was bound between two hard covers, but now I’m here I’m fully aware that it’s not the final chapter so the words won’t get written. Plus it’s hard. Of course, my family have been there throughout but I am not sure you can ever repay the debt that you owe them. But Mum, Dad and Jez have been there from the beginning (well, not Jez, he was some months later) and, while the bad bits are all me, they should get the credit for guiding my good points. Friends come and go in your life (and, thanks to the wonders of Facebook, they come back too). I don’t want this weekend to pass, however, without thanking all my family, acknowledging all those I’ve met along the way who’ve made sure this has been a blast and, of course, to Paul who – when I add it up – has been here for more than half of it and really makes it all worthwhile.

So, I’ll raise a glass to all of you. Here’s to whatever the next forty bring.

Happy Birthday To Me

Happy Birthday to me.

Matt Damon is Jason Bourne

The Bourne Identity delivers an action-packed thrill, featuring a surprising turn from Matt Damon.

I saw a pumped-up Matt Damon on The Bourne Identity last weekend. Sadly, I am a sucker for this kind of action movie. They have little point but tell a tale that absorbs you for 90 minutes and gives you an all-action thrill for some of that time. What more do you want from a cinema-going experience?

My Review: Who would that thought Matt Damon could, convincingly, play the international agent? Yet a beefed-up Matt holds his own in the world of blockbuster espionage – that’s a world of martial art acrobatics and high-speed car chases down back alleyways (and flights of stairs). Franka Potente manages to keep the role of Marie convincing when many would have just walked away from Jason Bourne (Damon) at their first meeting. It’s a Friday night, action-packed, spy-game blockbuster (with a twist of amnesia) and, unfortunately, nothing more.