Paris of the Pampas

Alvear Palace Hotel, Buenos Aires

Alvear Palace Hotel, Buenos Aires

The ladies who lunch are gliding across the Alvear Palace Hotel’s golden lobby, patting their sculpted coiffures and checking the exact fall of their cropped designer jackets. Their radars are finely attuned to pick up sisters of their species and in minutes a congregation has formed, as if the women are mutually magnetised. It’s air-kiss greetings all round and they proceed in a tight, chatty cluster to the glass-roofed Jardin d’Hiver at L’Orangerie for high tea served by suitably attentive white-gloved waiters.

 All great cities have a fabled hotel at their heart and in Buenos Aires it’s Alvear Palace. Opened in 1932 and designated an official historical monument in 2003, this Belle Epoque confection stands on a prized corner block in Recoleta, the Argentinian capital’s Parisian-influenced district. Here, in the city’s north, are leafy squares, broad boulevards, chic boutiques and elegant apartment blocks with mansard roofs that look freshly lifted from the French capital’s most fashionable faubourgs. It’s not for nothing that Buenos Aires has been dubbed the Paris of the Pampas. A stroll away is Recoleta cemetery, a necropolis of mausoleums embellished with marble guardian lions and sorrowing angels. I see the occasional family member laying flowers or polishing iron-grille doors but, in contrast, there’s a jostling queue leading to the resting place of former first lady and champion of the masses, Evita Peron, in her Duarte family crypt.

Alvear Palace Hotel has 210 guestrooms, recently refurbished (some have been enlarged) and each layered with abundant detail. The scorched-pink floral print of the bedspreads is echoed in delicately embroidered slippers and gowns. There are perfect fresh peaches and bunches of pastel roses, Hermes toiletries that smell of green oranges, Louis XVI chairs, antique desks and 500-thread cotton bed linen so soft it’s like rolling in whipped cream. Above the bath is a flat-screen television and there are hillocks of snowy white towels.

All rooms are served by a personal butler, a maker of small miracles who will unpack and repack one’s ports, shine shoes, organise laundry and serve tea on silver trays and (in my case) attend to a guest’s fluey germs by delivering just-squeezed orange juice and extra tissues. Public areas are awash with crystal chandeliers, gilded columns and lavishly swagged and tumbling curtains. Formally attired doormen and porters bustle in blurs of activity and the high-ceilinged lobby is the meeting place of le tout Buenos Aires.

Eating Sunday brunch at L’Orangerie is considered the city’s finest and there’s a daily lunch buffet, too, with a sushi and sashimi station, fabulous cheeseboard and separate dessert table. The hotel’s fine-dining restaurant, La Bourgogne, has a surprisingly contemporary feel, with cherry-red chairs and light decor; chef Jean-Paul Bondoux is at the helm and tables are placed at spacious intervals to allow the passage of domed carvery trolleys groaning with supreme Argentinian beef.

Rollcall The list of past guests is a who’s who of wealth, celebrity and influence, from heads of state to stars of the ilk of Sophia Loren, Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek and Matt Damon. Greek shipping heiress Christina Onassis was a regular resident (she died elsewhere in Buenos Aires in 1988) and one Alvear Palace Hotel manager of the day has been quoted as saying Onassis would travel with so much luggage that staff had to make two trips to the airport to collect it. Unlike many establishments, the hotel happily provides a list of its rich and recognisable habitues perhaps not while they are actually there) as, after all, this is a place to see and be seen.

Hot tip Take advantage of the hotel’s personal shopper service for insider info on Recoleta’s best boutiques. Be sure to head for Rossi & Caruso at Posadas 1387 (about five minutes on foot from Alvear Palace Hotel) for the city’s best handmade leather bags, totes, suitcases, jackets and, if the pampas is calling, saddles and whips. The business was founded in 1868 (and rebranded as Rossi & Caruso in 1941; see rossicaruso.com) and, although the regally dressed store looks ruinously expensive, prices are good (chunky handbags from about $300). A new local outfit, Inspira Travel (inspiratravel.com), also offers a three-hour “in the know” shopping tour of Recoleta with Australian-born guide Kirsty Noble. The outing includes morning tea, lunch and store discounts for a most reasonable $US45 ($70).

Everyone’s talking about South America has been slow to catch on to the beauty therapy boom but the hotel has launched a large spa and fitness centre with an oxygenated pool, pebbled reflexology pond, steam baths, hydro-massage showers and all manner of the latest treatments. When the tea-taking ladies in the L’Orangerie are done with their Limoges cups and little cakes, they slip off their heels for therapies with names as beguiling as the salt scrub-based Balneosel and the folkloric-sounding Parafango body rub, complete with volcanic mud, paraffin and – ole! – perhaps a tango flourish or two.  

Essentials Alvear Palace has appeared on almost every best-hotels list worth knowing about and is a member of Leading Hotels of the World. Standard rate from $US800 a night per double room, including butler service and buffet breakfast at L’Orangerie. Check for promotional specials from about $US400, including extra-night deals. For more information and rates, call [phone] or 1800 222 033 or visit lhw.com or alvearpalace.com. Qantas started thrice-weekly direct flights from Sydney to Buenos Aires in November last year. For specials, visit qantas.com.au. Or consider an
escorted Argentinean holiday with Australian-based experts Jose and Leona Blanco. See blancotouringcompany.com.

Susan Kurosawa is The Australian’s travel editor.