I had an email from one of my readers recently. Her name is Charmaine, she’s from England and is currently visiting Buenos Aires for the first time with her friend Samantha.

As they were keen to have authentic Argentine food, I recommended La Gran Parilla, my favourite place for steak, and they enjoyed that very much. Another staple of the food here, though, is the empanada, and El Sanjuanino is a little, very old, place quite near me that is famous for them. It’s also very old-world, and that’s why I love it. Here’s a photo of us there after our empanadas. They serve the house Malbec in these cute penguin jugs — and the quantities are quite generous!

The second picture is a sketch I did of El Sanjuanino last year, and the third is the selfie I took of us after breakfast this morning.

I set Charmaine up for a tango lesson with my lovely teacher, Alejandro, and she now plans to find a place to take lessons when she gets back home!

I’m always happy to help visitors have a great experience of “my” city!

Here are a couple of photos with my new Scottish friends, Lyn and David. I really enjoyed spending time with them, especially when I showed them around a bit downtown the day before they left. I even took them on the bus — an experience most tourists don’t get, but an integral feature of Buenos Aires (as you will know if you’ve read my book!)

The first photo is in Cafe Tortoni, the oldest cafe in Buenos Aires. I think it opened in 1882 or thereabouts. The bronze in the background is Carlos Gardel, known as the Father of Tango. I love this place. It used to be a hangout for writers and artists, who would sit there all night, smoking and drinking and talking politics. A throwback to an earlier time.

The second one is taken with the life size figures outside La Biela, another cafe that’s a well known Buenos Aires landmark — as it’s five minutes from where I live, I spend a lot of time there! The word “biela” means monkey wrench, or spanner, or I’ve sometimes heard it as connecting rod, but in any case it’s to do with cars. The reason is that when the cafe opened in the 1940s it was a hangout for the famous race car drivers of the time, including Juan Manuel Fangio — even I’ve heard of him, but I didn’t know he was Argentine!

Like many who visit Buenos Aires for just a few days, Lyn and David loved it and I predict they’ll be back!