Buenos Aires is a European city: nothing like Mexico City or New York or Bangkok. Think Paris or Madrid or Brussels, but without the attitude.

The streets seem familiar to anyone who has traveled on the Continent. And one great feature of European streets is that you're never more than a block away from a restaurant, café or bar. So when you're worn out from shopping, or viewing monuments, or touring museums, you can just step into a nearby place, and for the price of a drink or an espresso, you can rest your feet and regroup with your city map laid on the table in front of you.

The Plaza Dorrego Bar is a colorful example of the kind of place Jean and I use for rest stops.

All the bars we've visited in Buenos Aires have been pleasant places. They're not havens for bleary has-beens. No drunks sleep down at the end of the bar. The places don't smell like stale beer, and most important, they're smoke-free. Smoking inside public places is prohibited by law in Buenos Aires.

Lone women can patronize bars here without looking like hookers. They're safe places where they won't be hit on. Much.

Well, maybe sometimes. The mustachioed waiter is straightening his tie, a subtle "I'm interested" signal aimed at a pretty girl. Like any proper European waiter, he has no trouble ignoring other patrons.

Plaza Dorrego Bar has been in business for more than a century. Old bottles line the walls. Drawers for flour, polenta, cheese, and other foodstuffs date from a prior incarnation as a grocery store. A military-grade coffee percolator graces a counter.

Mercifully, it's no longer used.

(We've all become so picky about our coffee. That percolator makes me shudder at the thought of the bitter, stale sludge once dispensed from it. But I happily drank gallons of coffee from machines just like it in the 60s.)

Unshelled peanuts with your beer, cookies with your coffee. Wooden chairs, beat-up wooden tables. No stemware. A no-nonsense place. A comfortable room to hang out in—for the whole afternoon if you feel like it.

Our "usual" rests on the table in front of Jean: agua con gas for her, diet cola for me. No ice. We're cheap dates, in case you were wondering.

We spent a restful half hour sipping our drinks, and another half hour trying to get the waiter's attention. Our bill finally paid, we went, refreshed, back to the noise and bustle of the streets.