Customer Reviews

The Rough Guide to Buenos Aires 1 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We just returned from an incredible two-week stay in Buenos Aires and the new Rough Guide to Buenos Aires was an essential part of our experience. Unlike other BA guidebooks we've read about on amazon.com, this guide is up to date and accurate (the fact that it's brand new helps). We liked its in-depth coverage of neighborhoods and good maps. The restaurant recommendations were very good.

A few restaurants were not where they were shown on the Rough Guide maps (Un Altra Volta in Palermo and Rigoletto in Recoleta) but we learned quickly to go by the address in the book, not the dot on the map. Another pet peeve is that the restaurants are listed in their own section in the back rather than within each neighborhood section so we found ourselves doing more flipping back and forth than we thought was necessary. Other than these small hassles though we highly recommend the book. We had also purchased used copies of Time Out Buenos Aires and Lonely Planet Buenos Aires, neither of which we even cracked open.

I live in Buenos Aires, it came to my attention that many tourists know my city better than me, so I decided to be a Tourist in Buenos Aires.
I asked for the best guide in the book shop, and it was in english. It was this one.
I loved it, it has a lot of information, it's easy to use and has correct information. I only found 2 spelling mistakes of Spanish words in all I'm reading.
Be aware that we are having inflation, so prices change every day, therefore won't be exactly the same to this or any other guide.
IF YOU COME TO BUENOS AIRES; THIS IS YOUR GUIDE!

I used both the Rough Guide as well as TimeOut to research my recent trip to Buenos Aires and the Rough Guide is easily the better of the two. Although TimeOut adds a few things here and there, it became clear early on that it would merely be used to augment the Rough Guide. Rough Guide Buenos Aires simply goes into far better, far more interesting, detail about those sites one really wants to visit.

Like any major city, Buenos Aires extends way beyond anything a tourist, even an unconventional one, likely wants to see. (How many Europeans, after all, take a vacation to New York City to spend time in Flushings, Queens?) Neighborhoods like Monserrat, San Telmo, Boca, Retiro, Recoleta and Puerto Madero are not very far from each other. Even Palermo, the happening neighborhood nowadays, is not that far away. Rough Guide provides just the right balance between providing useful and interesting history of these areas while also pointing one in the direction of those sites, common and obscure, that makes a trip to Buenos Aires worthwhile.

The sections on restaurants, cafes and such also provides those interesting tidbits that might be of interest. One Argentine author, Ernesto Sabato, may not be that well known in the United States. But I have read two of his books and, thanks to Rough Guide (and no thanks to TimeOut), I found the little cafe where Sabato hung out and did much of his writing (Bar Britanico in San Telmo, for those who are interested). That is merely a little, though representative, example of the differences between the two guides.

The maps in Rough Guide are very user friendly. As I explored a neighborhood or walked from one neighborhood to another, these maps were invariably the ones I turned to most. Representative of the guide overall, they provided just the right amount of information, noting landmarks to find one's way.

Buenos Aires is a great city. For a guide that is up to the task of making your visit the best one possible, go for this one.

My trip to BsAs without it would have been another. I often found that a lot of the tips given to me by locals where merely repeating what the book had told me before hand. Its attitude and tone is accesible and honest and it really goes out of its way to make sure you experience BsAs at its best, should you heed its advice. What I like the most about it its revelation of nooks and crannies that tourists don't really go to coupled with a little bit history of wherever you might find yourself.

This Rough Guide to Buenos Aires hits the mark. I'll be travelling there in October 2009. It is comprehensive, practical, well written, and fun to read. I reviewed two Buenos Aires DVD guides from the library, but this book was far better for planning. And then two weeks after receiving the book, a laminated "FLEXIMAP" of Buenos Aires arrived in the mail - at no charge. WOW!
It's a class act!

An excelent option. Clear and funny. Very good maps inside.
Es una excelente guia de Buenos Aires, con información clara y comentarios divertidos. Tiene muy buenos mapas.

I spent a month in Buenos Aries in early 2011, splitting my time between staying in an apartment in San Telmo for the first part of my visit and staying in an apartment in Palermo for the last part of my visit. I bought the map with me from Amazon.com before I left. The map was of high quality and I found it to be very, very useful in finding my way about this beautiful and big city. I highly recommend it!

One of the things I liked the most about this book is that it was up to date. We used this book to find some of the best places to eat. We found it extremely useful in this area. We also used it to help us decide which museums we wanted to visit. Again very helpful! I found it's layout simple and easy to use. I would recommend this book to anyone traveling to B.A.

I got this due to some good reviews about the Rough Guide regarding the timeliness of restaurant and cafe listings in Buenos Aires. This type of business comes and goes so often at times perhaps a printed, up-to-date list is too much to expect. In one instance we spent over an hour looking for a specific restaurant. Even fellow business people in the area kept telling us it was just up the street. Finally one person said they had recently gone out of business. This is just to say that you should not depend on printed restaurant and cafe reviews as many of those may no longer be in business. We had better luck with more current online guides for eating establishments. Otherwise, the book was good.

In Buenos Aires as I write this. The guidebook is hard to get much out of, fairly usleless for finding accommodations, and not as useful as my lonely planet Argentina book's section on BA.