Ask TheMetetron about living in or visiting Buenos Aires, Argentina

[Maulik]

I did exactly what Chairman did and had a blast. If I were choosing between Uruguai & Colonia I'd choose Colonia.

[Chairman Wood]

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Chair,

I was comparing Uruguai & Colonia.

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Ok well he appeared to be asking about just visiting the city of Colonia, Uruguay. But anyway to say you've seen the rest of Uruguay by visiting Colonia, I would also have to say is false. Now I haven't traveled throughout Uruguay but the 3 places that I've spent a little time in, Colonia, Montevideo and the beaches/towns surrounding Punta del Este, are completely different places.

[Chairman Wood]

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I did exactly what Chairman did and had a blast. If I were choosing between Uruguai & Colonia I'd choose Colonia.

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Ok, I'm a little confused. Colonia is a city in Uruguay. Is Uruguai the name of a different city or region? Where is it? I've never heard of it.

[MicroBob]

Not going to go through the whole thread to see if it's been mentioned:


Travel Channel's Samantha Brown is doing a Passport to Latin America series.

Her Passport to Europe stuff was pretty good I thought.

Tonight she went to Buenos Aires and Rio (consecutive episodes).
Didn't catch the episodes tonight but they re-run them quite a bit so I'll catch them sooner or later.

Next week she goes to Santiago, Chile and Monte Video, Uruguay. Other episodes include Sao Paulo, Honduras, Belize, Quito.
In July it looks like the series concludes when she goes to Cuzco, Peru and Machu Pichu in consecutive episodes.


(and yes Metetron and others...I remember I still owe my own Peru trip report. I'm slow)

[RiverPlay]

Colonia is a city in Uruguay, a small country with 3milllion inhabitants, and its 45min or 3hs, depending on wich boat you take, from Buenos Aires. The city is very very nice, because it is one of the oldest cities down here. So it has very nice 1700's buildings and stuff.
Then Uruguay has beaches wich are for sure better than argentinian ones, but not as good as brazilian beaches.
I would recomend going thre, if u research the net you'll see some very nice pics. As anything down here, its better to do it during the spring/summer time, winter here is not really cool

[RiverPlay]

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Is Colonia, Uruguay worth a day trip for a visitor? If so, what are some thing to see/do there?

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If you see one you've seen the other. How many days are you in BsAs for?

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Just 10 days. It sounds as if Colonia is probably not worth it then. I am planning to spend a day in La Plata mainly to visit the Natural Sciences Museum, which is supposed to be like the 5th best such museum in the world. Anybody been there?

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If you are interested about that subject it may be cool, u get see lots of paleontologic/arquelogic stuff, among other things, and just 1hr from Bs As.

[gmblpdam]

I'm almost ready to book an apartment with bastay.com. The apartment is not listed as coming with internet. However, when I spoke inquired about the apartment and spoke to one of the reps about the possiblility of adding internet, he told me that the apartment actually did have high speed internet and that it just was not listed. I want to believe him but I think there is a possiblity of him just telling me that to get me to book the apt.
Has anyone ever dealt with bastay.com? Would this type of thing be commonplace for a landlord to do?

PS The rep didnt really do anything to make me think that he was lying to me, I guess I'm just distrustful by nature. I'm just trying to feel out if this is something that happens alot.

[theTourne]

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Also, I really want to go to the Copa Libertadores semis on Thursday at la bombonera. Any advice on procuring tickets would be very much appreciated.

[/ QUOTE ] Here's a start:

http://listado.mercadolibre.com.ar/_CategID_10434

I'd google some other places as well and see what they have. You sometimes might be able to show up day of and buy at the box office but that is HIGHLY unlikely for this game. Also, we've done the scalper thing outside of the stadium to try to get tickets. This worked fine for games against smaller teams but I have no idea about this game or how much of a markup you would be expecting. Also this is a night game and I would want to spend as little time as possible in the areas not immeditely near the stadium where you might have to go for tickets.

Another note about La Bombonara: I always advise people in general to buy platea tickets. There you shouldn't run into problems. But if you must have popular tickets, use extreme caution and don't get tickets in the populars that are below the visiting team. That is the side that is on Brandsen Street. You are at the mercy of the other teams fans throwing things on you. I've seen some very nasty stuff; vomit, urine and large metal pipes are par for the course.

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I ended up finding a ticket on Craigslist. I'm sure I paid too much (AR$300 in total for medium level plateau seats, $250 to the ticket holder and $50 to the English speaking guy who posted on Craigslist), but as someone from out of town looking for the experience it worked well. There were a few different posts on Craigslist offering basically the same thing, where they include help getting to and into the stadium, so it seems like a good place to look for hard to find tickets. There were also a bunch of scalpers outside the stadium, but my Spanish would not be good enough to deal with them, and I don't know how much they were charging.

The game was obviously awesome, and I'm really glad I went. That atmosphere of course won't be present at every game, but I definitely recommend the trip.

[Chairman Wood]

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I'm almost ready to book an apartment with bastay.com. The apartment is not listed as coming with internet. However, when I spoke inquired about the apartment and spoke to one of the reps about the possiblility of adding internet, he told me that the apartment actually did have high speed internet and that it just was not listed. I want to believe him but I think there is a possiblity of him just telling me that to get me to book the apt.
Has anyone ever dealt with bastay.com? Would this type of thing be commonplace for a landlord to do?

PS The rep didnt really do anything to make me think that he was lying to me, I guess I'm just distrustful by nature. I'm just trying to feel out if this is something that happens alot.

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I have no experience with this company or companies like it.

I have been baited and switched several times in this country and at a much higher rate of occurance then in the US. I wouldn't say it is commonplace but be careful. Chances are you won't have problems but my best advice would be to make it very clear that you need internet upon arrival.

[Chairman Wood]

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I ended up finding a ticket on Craigslist. I'm sure I paid too much (AR$300 in total for medium level plateau seats, $250 to the ticket holder and $50 to the English speaking guy who posted on Craigslist), but as someone from out of town looking for the experience it worked well. There were a few different posts on Craigslist offering basically the same thing, where they include help getting to and into the stadium, so it seems like a good place to look for hard to find tickets. There were also a bunch of scalpers outside the stadium, but my Spanish would not be good enough to deal with them, and I don't know how much they were charging.

The game was obviously awesome, and I'm really glad I went. That atmosphere of course won't be present at every game, but I definitely recommend the trip.

[/ QUOTE ] Fantastic! But you actually saw the game? That didn't look to be possible on television due to all the fog. The game was fantastic though and there were some great goals. Although there was some heightened intensity because it was a big game that put them in the finals of Libertadores, the atmosphere is great there for games even against small teams. The stadium has acoustics that keep the sound in very well and every minute of everygame is filled with song.