I can’t tell you how many times we had heard over the decades that Buenos Aires is the European city of South America, with its buildings, great restaurants and arty culture. We finally wanted to see it for ourselves and had all kinds of romantic visions of violins, tango and dark bars; people rave about the food and wine and the polo matches have an international glamour. We have only ever heard how sexy and exciting it is. Because of this I just rolled with it, going without my usual fine tune research. While we had low expectations of Rio on this trip, conversely, I think our expectations of Buenos Aires were set a little too high.

I found about a dozen really good hotels in Buenos Aires but for me the Faena Hotel & Universe was the stand out, exciting choice. We follow witty French design star, Phillip Starck’s work and wanted to experience his latest, lavish project that had the world talking and swept every design award when it opened in 2005 - including a nod for best new hotel from hipster bible, Wallpaper magazine.

Of course a big, established city like Buenos Aires has a Four Seasons and an InterContinental - excellent hotels that are the accommodation equivalent of a classic, preppy brand like Ralph Lauren. They are clustered in the upmarket, posh Recoleta district, a quartier we can relate to. And hip, social hotels don’t always work best. In places like London or Paris we prefer the traditional, old school grand hotels so we don’t lose out on the essence of the city’s culture. But in this case we knew that the Faena’s hot design aesthetic would be part of the travel adventure.

We were warned that the Faena Hotel & Universe was situated a little out of the way in the portside Puerto Madero redevelopment... but we soon discovered that this area is actually quite close to the city ‘centro’, only a short walk across the river.