Buenos Aires, Argentina
The stunning city of Buenos Aires is the capital of Argentina and was our first stop after the Patagonia region. This city is known for its architecture, tango, and cosmopolitan energy. We spent a full week here and had an absolute blast experiencing everything that Buenos Aires had to offer.
The city of Buenos Aires gets much of its look and feel from its period of growth and economic surge in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. The leaders and wealthiest citizens wanted to the city to become the “Paris of South America'' and hired many Neoclassical architects and sculptors to design their homes and buildings. The city has numerous beautiful and ornate government buildings, apartment towers, old mansions, and tree filled public parks. We explored many neighborhoods of BA; the hip streets of Palermo, the grand urban canyons of Recoleta, the historic City Center, the markets in San Telmo, and the vast parks and gardens along the water. We did two separate walking tours of BA to see all of the old neighborhoods and also did a separate tour of the opera house, the Teatro Colon.
The Teatro opera house was stunning and one of the most impressive buildings we have ever seen! It was built between 1899 and 1908 and had three separate architects (each of the first two died so they had to be replaced :/ ) but somehow it managed to come together seamlessly. The acoustics are renowned and said to be one of the five best concert halls in the entire world. The building was built with imported granite from Europe and featured many different colors of stone like classic white granite floors and pink and green banisters. There was an entire hall that was covered floor to ceiling in gold foil paint, and the ceiling was about 30ft tall. The concert hall itself was just as grand as the entrance and common areas. There were 6 stories of private suites and booths as well as a top floor with more seating for regular patrons to listen to shows. The outside of the building was almost as impressive as the inside. We wanted to see an opera but the performers take a 2 month summer holiday during January & February! We were blown away by the theater and would consider it a must visit for anyone coming to Buenos Aires.
Between the City Center walking tour & Recoleta walking tour took, we saw so many historical landmarks, beautiful stone buildings and tree-filled parks. We saw the Presidential Palace which is made of pink stone, the current Senate building, Ave 9 de Julio (the widest street in the world measuring 110m wide and has 18 lanes total plus a dedicated bus lane all broken up by 4 medians), and Plaza General San Martin. The Plaza is dedicated to the Jose de San Martin who led, separately, the armies of Argentina, Peru, and Chile to their independence from Spain; imagine getting your butt whooped by the same guy in three straight wars. We learned a ton from the walking tour about the history of both Argentina as a whole and Buenos Aires; there was so much packed into these tours and we really enjoyed them.
One thing we did outside of the tour was visit the Eva Peron Musuem. Eva Peron is a huge part of Argentina culture. She was a radio personality and actress in the 30’s and 40’s before marrying a politician, Colonel Juan Peron, and becoming the First Lady of Argentina after he assumed power in 1948. She was beloved by the people of Argentina and was a champion of worker’s rights, family healthcare, and childhood education. She was close to running as Vice President on the ticket with her husband in 1951 before tragically becoming sick with cervical cancer and passing away the next year at age 33. There is now a museum dedicated to her that showed some of her acting work and political speeches and conveyed just how much the people loved her. When she passed away, she was given a state funeral and millions of people packed the streets of Buenos Aires to mourn her; it is claimed that so many people bought flowers to place on her casket that even the neighboring countries of Argentina sold out of flowers. The Peron movement is still a part of the Argentina political makeup to this day and there are murals and paintings of her all over the city.
One of our favorite days in the city was the day we rented bikes and rode them through town. Recently Buenos Aires has invested into making their city more bicycle friendly and there are protected bike paths on most of the roads in the denser neighborhoods.
We started in the city center and rode southwest along the water to La Boca. This neighborhood was originally a central neighborhood in Buenos Aires until a series of Yellow Fever outbreaks caused the area’s wealthier residents to migrate to the then-suburbs of Recoleta. The neighborhood is now mostly made up of blue collar residents and is famous for its soccer team, La Boca Juniors. The stadium is huge and rises up out of the neighborhood like a towering mountain. Riding by you can see tons of signs and flags supporting the club all throughout the neighborhood. The other popular spot is the Caminito street which has many colorful historic homes and buildings in the middle of an otherwise plain neighborhood. If we are being honest, the area was only for tourists and it was full of tour buses and cruise ship type passengers, so we turned our snooty butts around to ride back up to the city center.
This time we went through the Puerto Madero neighborhood, which is a newer development on an island along the water. This neighborhood was a stark contrast to La Boca and was filled with new apartments, shops, and luxury high-rises. We stopped along the river for our packed sandwiches and enjoyed the sun while resting for a bit.
Afterwards, we rode through old mansions in the Retiro neighborhood to the Avenue del Libertador. The bike path on this road took us along the entire northeast length of the city; passing by museums, artwork, the waterfront, expansive parks, and even the airport! We may have rode a little too far… We made it all the way to the Parque de la Memoria, a memorial that commemorated all the victims of state violence and terrorism across South America. Finally we turned back to the bike shop to return our bikes. We ended up biking nearly 20 miles that day but we saw so much of the city and are glad we did!
That same night we went to see a Tango show in the city that invented the dance. We caught an uber to El Viejo Almacén in the San Telmo neighborhood. This tango club puts on a nightly show that features a live band, multiple tango partners, percussion and rhythm dancing, and a famous singer all in one show. We sat at a small table with a candle and white tablecloth (very Goodfellas-esque) and ordered some wine. The show began with 4 couples all doing Tango routines for one song and then each new song would bring one or two couples back at a time to show off a different routine. I can only describe Tango as choreographed chaos; it's like a Salsa dance with way more going on in the feet, legs, and hips.
In addition to the Tango performances there were two percussion-based dancing partners. A gentleman would tap dance or play a drum while doing a routine and the woman danced with things called boleadoras, which were long strings with hard wooden balls on the end that she would swing over the top of her head and hit the floor to make music; it was incredible. We really enjoyed the experience and are equally both excited to try to learn Tango and terrified to attempt any of the moves we saw that night.
There was so much to do in Buenos Aires and it is a crime that we are only mentioning the food, drinks, and great people we met this far down in the blog post. We loved the food, restaurants, bars, and cafes that we found in this city. The most famous dish in Argentina is Asado which just means grilled meats. Everywhere you go you can find a great steak, sausage, pork, lamb, or grilled veggies cooked on a charcoal grill.
We did an Asado Culinary Experience through Airbnb at someone’s rooftop deck where he talked to us about the different cooking traditions and made a full course of grilled meats on his traditional parrilla, or grill. We had an empanada, steak, grilled veggies (the onions were simply placed in the charcoal embers to cook and you would peel them after taking them off the coals, we will be stealing that technique when we get home), grilled lamb, and blood sausage. All of this was served with plenty of Mendoza Malbec, of course.
We weren’t done with steak during our stay though and enjoyed lunch at the famous steak house Don Julio (thanks Chas and Katie for the gift!). This is the most popular parrilla in the city and we had to arrive 45 minutes before it opened to make sure we got a table. But don’t worry, while waiting they served you champagne and mini empanadas so we were happy to wait. Matt got an entire T-bone steak for himself and Susan had the filet mignon. The steak’s were great but a little more well done than we are used to; our Asado experience host told us that Argentina went through a Mad Cow scare in the 70’s and 80’s so most locals only eat meat well done. The experience was still great and we definitely went home to take a nap immediately after lunch.
We also had some delicious dishes, not just grilled meat, like Pastel de Papas (kind of like an Argentinian version of shepherd's pie) and Locro (a pork-corn-squash-whole host of other veggies stew) that were incredible, not to mention empanadas everywhere you went. We also had some great wine and cocktails going out in the Palermo neighborhoods. We had great cocktails at Rey de Copa, Victoria Brown Bar, and Comuna 14. We even went to a live jazz show at Borges 1975.
Buenos Aires also had plenty of Americans traveling or working remotely in the city. We were lucky enough to make friends with another couple who was traveling long term (Hi Jordan, Jason, and Anika!!) and someone from the Asado experience who introduced us to her expat friend group (Hi Avery!!). Being able to socialize again and make plans to hang out was honestly a refreshing slice of normalcy and being back home in a comfortable routine. It was a blast but also made us miss our friends back home even more!
There is so much more to say about Buenos Aires but there simply isn’t enough time. After spending a week in the city, our only goal now is to get as many of our friends and family to visit Buenos Aires as possible. And yes, we will definitely come back with you! We were able to experience every great part of traveling in Buenos Aires: history, architecture, culture, food, and nature. We will definitely be back and hope to bring a little slice of Argentina back home with us as well!