Customer Reviews

Laminated Buenos Aires City Map (Bilingual) by deDios (Spanish Edition)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I *loved* this map. It was durable and had street numbers - - very important in BA! Some reviews criticize the map for not showing all of the city, but if you're just going to be in the main sections, this is really all you need.

I've used this map for learning BA's streets during 2 trips there, each of 5 weeks' duration. I walk for 4-7 hours every day with this map. I wouldn't go to BA without it. During my first trip, my husband lost this map a week after we arrived. Another larger more expensive map we had was impossible to wrangle discreetly with on the streets and using it marked us as tourists - not a good idea from a personal security perspective. My husband bought another copy of the preferred map at a kiosko but it was difficult to find. On my next trip there 9 months later, alone, the kioskos and major bookstores were out of this map. After 2 weeks, I found some at the book store beside the cinemas of Recoleta Village, for about $US4.00 apiece. Save yourself valuable travel time by purchasing this map online in advance of leaving on your trip. I've found this map and its lamination to be especially durable. (But I fold it only along its intended creases.) Having folded it 1000 times, I can still read the street names situated along this map's folds; that's rare with unbound street maps. Because it's so compact and slim, it slides easily into the exterior pockets of my tote bag, quickly accessible to me but invisible to others in crowded spaces.

I only wish that de Dios published a second map in the same format of the farther out barrios of BA, stretching all the way to include Tigre. For now, I resort to single-page printouts I find online of those areas.

As for this map's atypical ordinals' placement, well that's how portenos visualize their own city. This layout identifies an aspect of porteno culture, similar in nature to seeing or dancing real Argentine Tango, enjoying Argentine meals and ingredients, and learning portenos' Castellano dialect and accent. When I use this map, I feel privileged for this opportunity to learn their city their way. It also means that I haven't wasted my travel funds on experiences I can have back home. The fact that I'm completely wrong to regard Palermo as being north-east of Recoleta doesn't bother me. Because what really matters is that the main parallel central arteries which are long, wide, dense,and change names along their routes, are more quickly graspable when they're laid out horizontally, so that your eye can follow them their whole length. (We read from side-to-side in most languages.) This, in turn, helps with planning rides on the subte lines. So this strange layout actually makes sense for this particular city. It's user-friendly.

Best map of the city--all the areas tourists are likely to go to, and more. includes subway stations (Subte), and address numbering. In Buenos Aires, most directions tell you the cross streets (Juncal y Laprida) to find a place. I carried this laminated map every day for the month I was in Buenos Aires, and couldn't have found things without it!

My normal way of finding places depends pretty heavily on the ordinal directions. I spent quite a bit of time learning street names before my trip. Having the map oriented as it is--north basically on the bottom of the map made it confusing to me the first few days as I had to reverse my directions. I would use this map on future visits because of the street names and numbers, but I might get a second map that has north at the top.

This map is very helpful. I do wish that it showed hotels, museums, etc. like the Streetwise maps do. The Streetwise have better lamination, too, but they did not have one for BA, so this is a fairly good substitute.

I hate maps where north is not at the 12 o'clock position. This is one of those maps. It's all the more difficult when you learn that the map only has a small sliver of Bs. As. It's confusing trying to use this with other maps that are more comprehensive because of this orientation issue.

This map doesn't travel well either. The lamination is poor, so a couple of trips around humid Buenos Aires and this thing is pretty beat up.

Received this - have had the opportunity to study it and it will come in handy for our upcoming trip to Argentina. Appears to be small enough to fit into travel bag and not bulky for referring to it while walking the streets of Buenos Aires.

I was disappointed when I received this map, and perhaps if I had read the reviews, I would have avoided it. Certainly nonstandard in its northeast-southwest orientation, it was difficult for me to make sense of without rotating it 45 degrees. And the fact that it covers a fraction of the city tells me it should be called something like "Selected Neighborhoods of Buenos Aires". The pullout map that comes with the Lonely Planet Buenos Aires Encounter is much more useful for my purposes.

Yes, B.A. is in the southern hemisphere, but why are north and south not in the usual positions on this map? For someone used to having north at the top this is confusing, disorienting, and makes the map less than useful. Would suggest a different map with the coordinates you are used to.

The map is very nice and well designed. However, the laminating is not very strong and it seems it will easily get damaged.