Things To Know Before You Go to Buenos Aires

The Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema takes place every April; a schedule can be found on the Web site in the months leading up to the festival. (The site has an English-language section.) It's best to order tickets ahead of time, though you will have to plan ahead: Advance sales get cut off about three weeks before the event begins. If you want to wing it, you can buy tickets to the films at the festival headquarters every morning—but be forewarned: The buzziest (and often best) Argentine films sell out quickly.

If you're not going to make it to Buenos Aires but want to see Argentine films, Netflix has a good selection. Epitafios will be available on HBO on Demand starting June 19; it is broadcast on HBO Latino, too.

Flights:
From most places in the United States, the flight to Buenos Aires is long—10 or 11 hours. American Airlines offers direct overnight flights from New York and Houston, and this is the best way to go. If you get a window seat—and bring sleeping pills—you can easily sleep for most of the trip and arrive in Buenos Aires feeling fresh as a daisy. The time difference from New York or Houston isn't that significant (Buenos Aires is one hour ahead of Eastern Time), so you won't have to deal with much, if any, jet lag. (We had none.)

Restaurants/Dining:
Porteños eat dinner late, especially on the weekends. Most nights, restaurants don't open till 8 p.m., and you'll be dining alone if you show up then. If you can bear the hunger pangs—or the disruption to your normal schedule—it's worth waiting till 10 on weeknights and 10:30 or 11 Thursday through Saturday to dine. Restaurants have a lovely, warm atmosphere, and it's great to get a feeling for the city in its most relaxed guise. The traditional parillas, or steakhouses, are everywhere you look, but the truth is that many of the restaurants serving new Argentine cuisine are much better—more interesting, varied, and tasty. We did go to one excellent upscale parilla, Lomo, for brunch, where we sampled both grilled meat and a salad with plenty of grilled vegetables and a little chicken. Our favorite restaurant was Mott, in Palermo Viejo, which served a superb steak salad. Palermo is also a great neighborhood for brunch and shopping. Breakfast in Argentina is usually very simple and light, and most hotels offer a continental version of some kind.

Argentine pizza is considered a specialty, but beware: Generally, it's a pile of cheese interrupted by occasional flecks of dough. If you like tomato sauce on your pizza, you ain't gonna like the Argentine kind. We avoided it after our first lunch.

Getting Around

Taxis:
When possible, have your hotel or a restaurant call a taxi for you. There are plenty of cabs in the city, but not all are regulated. Radio Taxi is the brand you want, but all the knockoffs look the same, and many have painted "Radio Taxi" on their doors. Frankly, though, the cabs are so cheap that if you do get ripped off, it's likely to be a matter of a few dollars.

Subway:
The Buenos Aires subway is cheap, fast, and easy-to-use. It also seemed quite safe, at least during the day. Its main drawback is that it doesn't go everywhere; for instance, our hotel in Palermo was a good 15-to-20-minute walk from the closest station.

Car rental:
We didn't rent a car, and we wouldn't advise it if you're staying in Buenos Aires. The driving there is relatively insane: At many intersections, there are neither stop signs nor lights. Drivers proceed, it appears, by finely honed instinct.

Where to stay:
Buenos Aires has an abundance of good hotels, from very high-end (Faena Hotel + Universe, designed by Philippe Starck, where guests are assigned an "experience manager"), to hostels, with many options in between. You should be able to get a nice room for about $125 a night, if not less. We stayed in two different neighborhoods: 725 Buenos Aires is a modernist hotel in the middle of the town; the neighborhood was highly convenient but short on ambience. Our second stay was at Hotel Home in the Palermo Hollywood section of Palermo Viejo, which is where we'd stay if we were to return. The rooms aren't huge, and there are only 17 of them, so you have to reserve early. But the ambience is great; it's owned by a British couple who endeavor to create a home away from home and to celebrate the cosmopolitan aspects of the city. It has a small pool, a nice spa, and a lovely restaurant that serves organic juices and excellent mojitos and is a nice place to hang out.