you sound like you probably shouldn't leave the US or Canada.

Thanks for the advice but I am in Japan at the moment and that wasn't a particularly helpful response. I never claimed I need things to be a certain way. Aside from the heat, very little will phase me. But I still can be curious how life is in a place I am going for a few months...

Public transport no worse than the US, buses run every 5m.

Taxis are fine, much more expensive than they used to be but still much cheaper than say US.

You are almost definitely safer in Palermo/recoleta than you are in most cities in North America. While there are places you dont really want to go, it is no different to other big cities. If you hang out in the normal areas (palermo etc) it would be quite a stumble for you to end up in a bad neighbourhood. Much easier in other areas, but youll figure it out.

Airport is a $25-$30US 1h taxi each way. Its safe, though they will try and rip you off from $25 to say $35. Not sure what you mean in regards to travel to other countries. Boat trip to Uruguay is cheapish and safe, nowhere else is really convenient unless you want to take a 40??h bus to peru

Awesome, thanks. As to the bolded, I did mean a boat trip to Uruguay as an example, but also was curious if people found BA an easy starting point to fly all around South America. The places I am most likely to go if I am there for 4 months would be Patagonia, Uruguay, Brazil, and Ecuador or Peru. Not sure if I am overdoing it (I likely am) but when it is hard not to want to cruise around a continent that you are on for a long while that is very far from home.

A boat trip to Uruguay (1 hr) is super easy and leaves right from the center harbor of Buenos Aires. The airport that flies to many of your countries leave out of Jorge Newberry (in/very near Palermo) This airport is closer than the Int'l Airport located outside of the city. It took us 12 minutes to get there from Recoleta. Took it down to Patagonia (El Calafate)

Those ****ing taxis, lol. Absolute robbery now but there is nothing anyone can do about it. 15 months ago it would cost me less than 35 pesos from the boat up to my apartment in Belgrano; about a 20 minute ride which I thought it was quite reasonable. Months later there was like a 15% increase and the trip crept up close to 45 or so at times. This past winter another change and I've been paying almost $60 on the nose for the return trip the last few months. As of today, another 26% increase!! It's ridiculous how fast prices of everything are going up but it's definitely not something so crazy that it's going to change your life; just a constant annoyance at the moment. The subway/train are still really cheap and a great way to get around just only until a certain hour obviously. All in all the transportation available here isn't bad at all and alot of times much better than trying to drive.

Regarding the neighborhoods and things the majority of it is common sense when protecting yourself and not putting yourself in shady situations just like any big city. The areas you're probably going to be hanging out in are definitely safe in general as there will always be people around too. I wouldn't lose sleep over it all. Hope that helps!

that's a great edit

I thought it was clever! I'm surprised someone picked it up so fast really. "typo" just sounded so mundane at the moment lol

Anyone have a travel guide/link they found most or very useful for a first time BA stay?

http://www.gringoinbuenosaires.com/

http://wikitravel.org/en/Buenos_Aires_(city)

This city is so huge though, only been here a few weeks already can tell its going to take a long long time to figure out. Just explore talk to locals etc. while ur here.

www.baexpats.org

in regards to restaurants and clubs, I would never use the internet for choosing where to go.

guiaoleo is an excellent resource for finding good restaurants

Thanks guys. Much appreciated.

Why do restaurant webpages in Argentina basically never show prices?

EDIT:

Also wanted to ask if there as anywhere in South American that any of you guys traveled to from BA where you needed a visa or anything at all more than your US/European passport?

If so, how did you get it?

they don't show prices because of inflation.

Brazil. Need a visa. Maybe other places. Went to the Brazilian Embassy...

Sick. Sounds pretty lazy to me

I know Argentina has bad inflation, but how hard is it to update the website whenever you update the menu prices?


Anyway, what would you say is the average entree price for a solid but not fancy meal? For a high end steakhouse? For eating on the cheap? For really high end?

Are bottles of wine cheap?

http://baexpathub.com/

Spot on.

Re: Food, Sudestada is one of the best restaurants in town, no idea why ppl said it was bad. To, if you are the opposite of me and have no budget, is about as good as it gets outside of closed door spots, and Siamo nel Forno is easily the best pizza in a city where ****ty pizza is the norm. Also I always wonder why Mirasol doesn´t get more love. I also prefer to make my own steaks but I think it´s the most consistent steakhouse in town

Yeah IME mirasol was the best steakhouse in town. La Cabrera was good, but way less consistent, I had one amazing steak (on par with my best from Mirasol) and two dissapointing steaks (considering the place). Mirasol every steak was very good, apart from the one time they cooked it wrong, but happily redid it.

Sudestada, pretty decent but massively over-rated by 2p2ers. Good value at lunch time though, but not even close to the top 10 restaurants in the city imo.

Do try Juana M: http://www.juanam.com/juana-centro/
It's on C Pellegrini 1535 (basically alongside 9 de Julio in between Recoleta and Retiro.

They have an amazing salad bar (rare in BA) and it is "free" when you get any entree over like 50 pesos or something. They have a great menu (amazing rib-eye/ojo de bife) and the wine mark-up is ridiculously small.

It's definitely a gem on that side of town. If you're coming from Recoleta side, walk under 9 de Julio, where the restaurants/outdoor art displays are and cross the street.

sudestada was very overpriced, had little to no meat, service was terrible, and they charged us for refills on lemonade which ended up costing more than the food did. I shouldn't ever have to pay 120 pesos on drinks that dont have alcohol in them. taste wise on what we did get prob 7.5 or 8 out of 10. Overall prob a 6 or 7.

I've been looking at flights for a vacation from BA and the prices are kind of absurd. A lot of my friends who have been to BA keep telling me "wait until you are in Argentina and you might get better flight deals".

Do these people have a clue what they are talking about? Is there somehow a system where Aerolineas or LAN actually check IPs and offer different deals depending on what country you are making your search from?

Is there really any reason I should expect to see a better flight deal once I land in Argentina than I am currently seeing from Canada?

There's a gringo price that they make you pay unless you have a DNI. Yet more protectionist short-sighted horse**** - welcome to Argentina