The Thinkers' Guide to Staying in Buenos Aires: Classic Hotels
Travel writer Matt Chesterton may know more about the Buenos Aires hotel scene than anyone else on the planet, our words not his. When he isn't hiding from his creditors he is out and about in BA. For the next two weeks he will be busting myths and spouting off about the BA hotel scene. For starters, he has told us that La Cabaña is not the best steakhouse in Argentina, and rather, a national embarrassment, the kind of place that in previous epochs of "our" history would have been firebombed--reserved for Steakhouse Suckers, his words, not ours. This is exactly the kind of unadulterated sentiment you can expect to find here in the next couple of weeks--plus he is hilarious. If you wish to use this time to ask him a burning question you have about BA hotels, shoot it our way, and we will hand deliver it to him. Enjoy.
[The Hotel Chelsea] is perhaps best-known as the hotel where Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols may have stabbed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen to death on October 12, 1978...Ruth Harkness, an adventuress/naturalist who brought the first live giant panda from China to the U.S. in the 1930s, stayed at the Chelsea Hotel at one point during her long decline into alcoholic oblivion.
From the Hotel Chelsea's Wikipedia entry.
Every city has a 'classic' hotel or two, though very few have a 'classic' quite so classic as the Chelsea. Before we look at BA's contribution to the genre, we'd better define what we mean by 'classic hotel' - if for no better reason than to get rid of the damn quote marks.
A classic hotel is more talked about than stayed in. In the Chelsea's case, of course, it is more sung about than talked about - by Leonard Cohen (about shagging Janis Joplin), by Joni Mitchell (about waking up without a hangover), and by that drip from the Counting Crows with the pineapple haircut (about who cares what).
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by MattyC
