DECEMBER 2019
When you are discovering this blog, I hope you are enjoying Christmas with your favorite people. I am currently drinking wine with Hielke, Leonie and my mother in my hotelroom in Rio de Janeiro, listening to Christmas songs as most good restaurants in Rio close on Christmas Eve.. 😉 Tomorrow we will be back to frequenting restaurants again.. and now back to the blog.
We loved visiting Buenos Aires, it is definitely worth visiting for the amazing neighborhoods. The capital of Argentina has a strange mix of French, Italian and Spanish architecture with a bit of New York thrown in there for the big city feel 😉 By visiting the different neighborhoods you can get a good feel of Buenos Aires, each neighborhoods has its own quirks, but somehow it all works together. We spent a total of four nights in the city, which was perfect for doing all the things that were on our to-do-list in this vibrant city. I wrote a paragraph specifically about the food in Buenos Aires, because we pretty much ate our way through Argentina.
Practical information
Buenos Aires has three airports, we arrived at Aeroparque Jorge Newbery from El Calafate. This airport is located scary close to the city, only a 20 minutes taxi drive to our hostel (€ 4). Ezeiza is the largest, international airport in Buenos Aires, which is a 45 minutes drive to the city center. Luckily taxis and Ubers are really affordable in the city, so no need for switching public transport with big suitcases.
We stayed in the middle of the city center in the Monserrat area, this was the perfect location for doing sightseeing. Some cool neighborhoods are located in the north and some in the south, we liked staying in between so we were always a cheap taxi fare away from everything. Our private room & private bathroom cost about € 40 per night, I found Buenos Aires to have very affordable lodging. The cheaper options look a bit dated, but the value is very good!
There recently have been some violent incidents in Buenos Aires involving tourists. It is very important to always stay conscious of your surroundings. We didn’t wear any jewelry, didn’t bring our passports on the streets and kept our valuables close to us and had zero incidents. Buenos Aires is a big city and I don’t think there is a neighborhood where you can afford to be careless.
San Telmo
San Telmo was our favorite neighborhood, it is the neighborhood which I found had the most bohemian vibes. Historically La Boca is supposed to be the most bohemian area of Buenos Aires, as artists and writers used to live there, but I think this bohemian feel has moved to San Telmo. If you like Montmartre in Paris, you will also like San Telmo. The heart of San Telmo is the San Telmo market (Feria de San Telmo); this market has a nice mix of restaurants, shops where locals do their grocery shopping and vintage/antiques stores. We loved sitting at the small food stalls and watching well dressed locals and tourists wander by. Our first day in Buenos Aires we went to the San Telmo market because it was raining and our second day we went back because we liked the market and the neighborhood so much. On Sundays you will find a huge antique market just outside of the San Telmo market, unfortunately we couldn’t visit on a Sunday but we were very happy to already see lots of antique stalls on a Saturday. San Telmo felt like one of the safest areas of Buenos Aires, we felt like we could walk around and take pictures without being watched but I don’t know what it’s like at night.
La Boca
When you think of colorful Buenos Aires, you probably think of La Boca. La Boca is the neighborhood that features the colorful houses which you have probably seen in lots of photos. Of course I couldn’t miss out on visiting this area of Buenos Aires. It is not advised to visit La Boca at night, but why would you as it will be half as colorful at night? We visited La Boca on a Saturday morning and it was completely packed with tourists and tango dancing locals (?) that want you to pay for a picture with them. There was a huge queue to take pictures with the most famous house on the Caminito (pedestrian area), which I did not want to join… I am making La Boca sound bloody awful, which it definitely isn’t! It is super touristy, but the colorful houses are super charming, we liked getting to see some tango and we liked the puppets and paintings of the history of La Boca. The Boca Boys & Diego Maradona are real heros here. If you are into football, you can also visit the Boca Boys stadium in La Boca. On the internet you read that it is best to visit with a tour as La Boca can be dangerous, but I did not find that necessary. Make sure you are being dropped of at the Caminito and don’t walk too far from the tourist area and you will be fine.
Palermo (Soho)
I grew up with the Dutch TV-show “Julia’s Tango” which was located in Buenos Aires and the actresses were always wearing amazing, colorful dresses. So I set my heart on doing some dress shopping in Buenos Aires. After doing some research I discovered that Palermo Soho is the place to be if you want to do some shopping. An Uber dropped us off at Plazoleta Julio Cortazar and from there you will find several shopping streets. I particularly liked that you can find lots of boutique shops over here, a little bit more expensive, but more original things that I cannot buy in the Netherlands. If you don’t want to go shopping, you can go to Palermo for the cool murals. In Palermo you will find street art all around, which was a nice bonus for us. The more trendy restaurants, such as vegan food bars and burger joints, are also located in Palermo. If you want a healthy dinner, Palermo is a good location. We decided not to stay in Palermo for dinner, as we found that these trendy restaurants can be found in every big city in the world. We’d rather have dinner at one of the classical Argentinean restaurants with the too bright lightning, to experience Argentinean culture. At times Palermo reminded me of New York (SOHO/Brooklyn) and Harakuja in Tokyo, it is definitely an interesting place to visit in Buenos Aires!
Other things..
One of my favorite things in Buenos Aires was visiting the Ateneo Splendid bookstore. This bookstore is located in an old theatre. I always love visiting bookstores and this special location made it even better!
We ended up visiting the Japanese gardens on a day on which Argentineans had free entry, so this wasn’t a very relaxing activity, though it was fun to see all the families having fun in the park. After this we we did a walk to the Floralis Generica, a cool metallic flower, that is supposed to open during the day and close during the night, but currently isn’t moving..
This flower is located close to the Recoleta neighborhood, which is one of the more fancy neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. We loved strolling around a bit and admiring the pretty Christmas decorations of the fancy hotels. You can also visit the Recoleta Cemetery, apparently this is a beautiful place, but we decided not to visit as I didn’t feel comfortable by visiting a cemetery as a touristy place given my personal situation.
Of course you can also visit a (art) museum in Buenos Aires. I checked the current art exhibitions in the museums, but couldn’t find the perfect exhibition. As we were a bit short on time we decided to skip visiting a museum.
Ideas for day trips
As there isn’t enough to do in Buenos Aires.. it is also the perfect location for some day trips.
We did a day trip to the beautiful colonial town Colonia del Sacremento in Uruguay. This was a super relaxed trip that we would certainly recommend doing. I will write a separate blogpost about our experience in Uruguay 🙂
From Buenos Aires you can also visit a polo match, but it isn’t always polo season, so make sure to do some research before you decide to visit. Other options are visiting the Tigre Delta or visiting an estancia/ranch. I would definitely recommend visiting an estancia to get a view of the country side, we had seen this in Mendoza and Patagonia and loved the views and the people.
Argentinean food
One of the things that made our stay in Argentina so amazing was the foodie culture! Argentina is full of bodegas and cervecerias. We loved trying all the craft beers and we didn’t have a bad glass of wine. In Patagonia we dined at quite some parrillas (steakhouses), so we went for something different in Buenos Aires: tapas. Buenos Aires really reminded us of Spain with all the tapas bars, which are all decorated in a typical style, with wooden panels, a simple interior and lightning that was a bit too white… It is like time has stand still in some restaurants in Buenos Aires, but in a good, nostalgic way! Our favorite tapas dish was “provoleta”, grilled Provolone cheese (will definitely try at home). We particularly loved “Los Galgos”, which is located close to the Ateneo Spendid bookstore. This is a very traditional restaurant, with very good original dishes. The service is a bit hasty, but the scene is really good. The visitors are a nice mix of locals and tourists. During our travels I learnt that when the food is really good, you have to go back a second time, because you never know how disappointed you will be when you go elsewhere. I also like the idea of having a “local hangout” so you can kind of experience the idea of living in a city. In Buenos Aires you will find breakfast bars at every corner of the street, these restaurants often look very dated, but they have breakfast for very reasonable prices (€4 per person, for a tostada, coffee and juice). We were surprised to be able to drink fresh orange in breakfast deals, as we often received juices which were softdrinks in disguise during our travels. I did find the menus in Argentina very confusing, they often have other names for food than in other Spanish speaking countries (different words for strawberries, mushrooms, meat etc). As Argentina is a true “meat country”, they often have many meat dishes on the menu, which refer to different parts of the cow which also got very confusing. I learnt just to order “ojo de bife” and not ask any other questions… Hielke and I try to eat less meat and more vegetarian, but with the quality meat in Argentina that was a real struggle.
No pictures of the food, as food never looks as tasty in pictures. I will finish off with this picture of Hielke enjoying a beer 🙂
