Buenos Aires, the Paris of South America

And we completely agree with this nickname given to the capital of Argentina.

We were really seduced by Buenos Aires : its different neighborhoods charmed us, its tango captivated us, its restaurants fed us delicious food and its inhabitants welcomed us with open arms. The city is unique, elegant, lively, colorful. So many adjectives that come to mind when describing it. And you will quickly understand why we liked our time in the capital so much.

Bus from Puerto Iguazu to Buenos Aires

It’s still with a huge smile on our faces that we leave Puerto Iguazu to go to Buenos Aires, not only because of the few days at the falls, but also because we were upgraded in the bus. Indeed, we paid for pretty comfortable seats (the same ones we had between Cordoba and Buenos Aires), but when we get in the bus we notice that the seats are so much better. We have no idea why, but the bus is full with these awesome seats that tilt back all the way to 180! We even have our own TV screen, a true luxury.

We are going to be so comfortable during this 18 hour ride, it is awesome. So we settle down, take all our stuff out and lay down ready for the best 18 hour bus ride of our life. Unfortunately, after a few hours, the driver comes to tell us that we are going to switch buses… It is only 6 pm and the dream is over, we will have to go back to the regular seats. At least we thought so, because to our surprise, when we hop in the second bus, we notice that we will have the exact same kind of seats! Oh boy we feel lucky. We get back on the road and after a couple of hours, another surprise, we get served some appetizers and a beer. They even give us a printed out menu of our upcoming diner.

We then get served a real hot meal with a glass of wine of course. And icing on the cake, we are served a glass of champagne to go with our dessert! Absolutely incredible. Certainly the best meal we have ever had on a bus or an airplane.

Arrival in Buenos Aires

As you can imagine, we spend a great night, LYING DOWN, but still have to wake up early for breakfast. Yes you read that right, we are served a nice breakfast with coffee and pastries. Amazing service until the end. We arrive at the bus terminal in Buenos Aires on time, at 8 am. For once, we wouldn’t have mind for the bus to be late to sleep a little longer and take full advantage of this awesome bus. So if you are ever in Argentina, and need to take an overnight bus, we can only recommend you book with the Rio Uruguay bus company. By far the best service we ever had. Unfortunately this was also our very last over night bus trip in South America, so we won’t have the chance to book with them again.

It is still early in Buenos Aires when we arrive, so we decide to take the public transport to go to our hostel. The bus terminal is under huge construction so it is a big mess. We have trouble locating the right bus stop, and also we are not sure where we can buy our bus ticket. Fortunately, a very nice Argentinian guy takes us under his wing, and helps us catch the right bus. We will never say it enough, but people in Argentina are definitely super nice and helpful. So after a few days in the middle of nature, we are back in a big city!

Our hostel is located right between the districts of Palermo and Recoleta and we are already charmed. We chose to book two beds in a dormitory, because we are in a big city, the hostels are expensive and we weren’t able to find an Airbnb during our stay. Indeed, we are here during the weekend of the Marathon, and as we will learn later, the students holiday weekend, so a lot of places were already booked.

Visit of the district of Palermo, trendy district of Buenos Aires

The weather is amazing and after dropping our bags off at the hostel, we go discover the district of Palermo. Palermo is the trendy district of Buenos Aires. We find tons of nice shops and little cafés in Palermo Viejo, restaurants and hip bars in Palermo Soho and Palermo Hollywood.

In this neighborhood, we find a lot of street art. We walk by plenty of little paved streets filled with colorful graffitis.

For lunch we stopped in a library called “Libros del Pasaje”. Why a library? Simply because there is a nice little cafe, hidden in the back.

We also see many dog-sitters, walking around 5 or 6 dogs. We even saw one with 11 dogs! We have no clue how he handles so many dogs. Especially since they were of all sizes.

During the afternoon, we continue towards Palermo Chico, where we wanted to visit the botanical garden and the park del Rosedal, home to over 12,000 rose bushes. But both were closed, since today is the day of the students. Indeed, a little like Labour day for the workers, here they have a day dedicated to the students, and this is their holiday. Many events where organized, such as huge picnics or music concerts. Because of that, these two parks were closed, certainly because they didn’t want to get invaded by all the students.

Visit of the district of La Recoleta, the chic neighborhood of Buenos Aires

We then walk to the neighborhood of La Recoleta, this is a residential and high-end area. We also find nice hotels, luxury shops and of course all the embassies.

Very close, there is the Floralis Generica, a huge flower shape sculpture, that follows the sun, just as sunflowers do.

After spending the night in the bus, we walked about 10 miles today around the city. So we felt we could treat us to a nice cold beer in a patio. We were shocked to see so many craft beer bars around Palermo, so we stopped in one to enjoy a beer after this pretty long day.

Eating a good steak, a must-do in Buenos Aires

And we end the day in a parilla, recommended by a friend from Chicago, Andrea, who lived a few years in Buenos Aires. The meat was incredibly tender and delicious, of course we got a bottle of red wine from Mendoza to go with it. A real treat!

Tasting Pizza in Buenos Aires

The following day is a lot calmer, we feel tired from the crazy last few days, and decide to not do much and simply wander around Palermo. We love this neighborhood, definitely an area where it looks amazing to be living in. For diner, we go to a Pizzeria, once again recommended by Andrea, called El Cuartito. El Cuartito is an institution in Buenos Aires, it looks a little like a cafeteria with tons of sport posters on the walls.

We ordered a huge and delicious pizza.

Buenos Aires is not only known for its incredible red meat, but apparently also for its pizzas. Not very surprising when you know how important the Italian immigration was in Argentina. The pizzas are different than the ones you can find in Italy, but they were just as delicious.

The San Telmo Feria

San Telmo is another neighborhood of Buenos Aires. It is the bohemian district of the city. You can find plenty of old little restaurants,

old colonial houses,

a magnificent basilica, the basilica of Notre Dame de Bethlem,

and many antique dealers.

Our favorite place was the Pasaje La Defensa, a little paradise hidden from the street. It is actually an old colonial house, transformed into a commercial gallery with antiques, paintings and old clothes.

In this neighborhood, you can also find the San Telmo market. It is a nice market, covered by a huge and beautiful glass roof.

Once again, we find a little bit of everything, with antique dealers trying to sell old posters, old phones, jewelry or ancient furniture. But we can also find small cafes, and stands where we can stop to grab a bite, or even a wine dealer. We really enjoyed this place.

But if we came here on a Sunday, it is mainly because of its Feria. Indeed, every Sunday, the main street is closed to make place for a huge outdoor market. Once again, we can find absolutely anything here, like cups to drink your mate in,

plenty of Mafalda branded items, the famous character created by Quino,

and nice antiques.

This market starts at the Plaza Dorrego and follows the Defensa street all the way up to Plaza 25 de Mayo. We enjoyed strolling down the street despite the crowd.

On the Plaza Dorrego, there are many painters and people dancing tango.

Along the Defensa street we see plenty of very cute side streets.

Where we take pleasure in getting lost among antiques dealers.

We also walk by the famous Mafalda, and there is already a big line to take a picture with her. Luckily, we already saw her in Mendoza, with nobody around :

Puerto Madero, the modern district

After visiting San Telmo, we go towards Puerto Madero. This neighborhood is the most recent neighborhood of Buenos Aires, located in a former port area that has been repurchased and completely newly rebuilt.

As we arrive, we see a group of people waiting outside a hotel, all dressed up with one of the local soccer team’s jerseys.

And indeed, today is a very very important day in Buenos Aires, not because of the marathon. Seriously who cares about dudes running around the city? No, today there is the soccer game between two teams from Buenos Aires, River Plate and La Boca. And these teams have a huge rivalry. And without knowing it, we are standing in front of the hotel where the players of La Boca are, and their bus is waiting to take them to the stadium. Impossible to take pictures because the bus is blocking our view, but we did see some of the players going into the bus. We really don’t care much about soccer, but the fans around went absolutely nuts when the players came out. They were singing songs and yelling! A fun little moment for us.

After this unexpected little adventure, we continue our walk along the Costanera Sur.

Where the atmosphere is very festive. Indeed, on weekends people come here to danse the Bachata, eat some Choripan or drink some maté.

Along the promenade, there are statues of famous Argentinian sportsmen, and Matt had to take a picture with the recently retired NBA player Manu Ginobili.

The atmosphere is really fun and relaxing. All along the way there are women riding their bikes and selling beer. Matt couldn’t resist and had to order one!

Tango show

Because it was impossible for us to visit Buenos Aires without going to see some tango (the danse is classified as a world heritage by UNESCO since 2008), we decided to book a dinner and tango show at the Piazzolla theatre. One of the most beautiful and most famous classic theaters in Argentina.

But we have to tell you a secret. Before the show we were afraid we might not be able to get in. Indeed, at these tango shows the dress code is at least business casual. Unfortunately, since we are travelling for a year, we don’t have that kind of outfit available to us. So we went with our most beautiful clothes : hiking pants and a hiking button up shirt for Matt. And the only dress Maider has, which is nice with flowers, best suited to have a stroll in the park on a hot summer day than go to the theater. And the shoes might be the worst, with Maider carrying her beach shoes and Matt with his hiking boots. At least we took off our fleece sweaters just before going in! But hey it worked, probably because we have French passports and they think this might be next year’s trend. But we got in. Once inside, we did get the stare down “what the hell are these two clowns doing here”, but we aren’t the ones to care.

The evening starts with a Tango lesson in a very beautiful room. We are concentrated and do our best to learn the steps. Maider is terrified that Matt steps on her foot with his hiking boots, but eventually we manage. We manage even better than some of the people all dressed up!

Then it is time for the diner. The diner takes place in the theater, built in the early 20th century.

The diner was excellent and we are excited for the show to start.

It finally starts at 10 pm and lasts just over an hour. The show was amazing! We saw a beautiful artistic performance. The atmosphere was warm and intimate, since the room seems smaller than it actually is. We felt very close to the dancers and the musicians.

The orchestra played music from Piazzolla, Pugliese and Gardel and was just perfect.

Here is a short video to show you a sample of what we saw.

Flight to Patag0nia canceled

As we wake up in our hostel, after the great evening we spent, we learn that our flight for Patagonia the next day has been canceled! No explanation whatsoever, but after talking to somebody on the staff of our hostel, we learn that there will be huge protests the next day in the entire country. And there will be no flights, no buses, no trains and the city will be more or less shutdown. So we call the airline and ask when is the next flight available and they tell us they have nothing before Friday (initially our flight was to leave Tuesday at 4:40 am). At that moment, we aren’t really happy, since that means going over our entire itinerary in Patagonia. BUT, we put things into perspective and realize we could be stuck in a way worse place than Buenos Aires. So that leaves us even more time to continue to explore this amazing city. But for the next 4 nights we can’t stay at the hostel, because they don’t have any availability. So we decide to try to find a room on Airbnb, and are lucky to get a great deal. Indeed, our private room in an apartment is even less expensive than two beds in a dormitory in the hostel we are currently in.

Visiting the colorful district of La Boca

After this morning surprise, we head back out and go to visit the famous neighborhood of La Boca, known for its Caminito and soccer club. The neighborhood is made of colorful houses, tango dancers and its blue and yellow soccer stadium painted to the colors of the local team. Without forgetting that La Boca is also one of the poorest neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. And behind these couple of very touristic streets, there is a working-class neighborhood where the houses are absolutely not colorful, and tourists should avoid the area. So we won’t try to adventure ourselves inside the “real” Boca, and will stick to the colorful and touristic streets.

We start our visit by the famous Caminito, clearly this is what you see on all the post cards sold here in Buenos Aires.

It is full of colorful houses and street painters.

We get there as two huge tourist buses are about to leave so we have the place to ourselves !

We head towards the stadium of La Bombonera (called this way because it looks like a piece of candy). On the way, we see plenty of street art.

Around the stadium, there are plenty of gift shops, selling plenty of blue and yellow merchandise.

Maider fits right in, since she is also dressed in blue and yellow !

We end the visit in a pedestrian street, with plenty of restaurants where tango dancers take over the patios.

We also find little dead end streets that are home to art galleries and antique dealers.

The visit, despite being very touristic, is still worth it to us. Indeed, the neighborhood stays very cute and authentic.

La Bomba del Tiempo

Every Monday evening, a group of percussionists play at the Konex center in Buenos Aires. The name of the group : La Bomba del Tiempo. They have been playing here for 10 years now! We heard about it thanks to our friend Andrea, and also read about in different blogs. So we decided to go check it out, and spent a great evening.

First of all, the Konex is a really cool outdoor space in an old industrial building. We love it !

When we get in, we go directly to the bar but are surprised to see that they sell no drinks smaller than 17 oz! So Matt gets a 34 oz beer, and Maider a 17 oz cocktail, all for about $7. Enough to set us in the mood for this unique concert.

In total, there are 15 percussionists, playing different instruments, wearing a red overall (almost looks like what they wear in the series Money Heist on Netflix, on a side note if you haven’t already you should definitely check that tv show out!), all placed around a conductor.

We spent two hours dancing to the rhythm of the music (well Maider danced, Matt just moved his body awkwardly).

Here is a short video of their performance (sorry we didn’t film Matt’s amazing moves).

A day of strike doing nothing

The next day, Tuesday 25th, the entire country is on strike to protest against the economical crisis the country is in. There is no public transportation, and a lot of people don’t work, plenty of museums and shops are closed, everybody suggests us not to do anything today. Which is a blessing in disguise because Maider is feeling a little under the weather with a soar throat. So we take the day off and do nothing !

Micro-Centro neighborhood

For our last two days in Buenos Aires, we finally were able to visit the Micro-Centro, until today it was filled with protestants.

The name is pretty explicit, this is the center of the city. It serves as the financial and political district of Buenos Aires, where most big companies have their headquarters.

We started by going to the teatro Colon, the oldest theater in South America, and according to Argentinians, the most beautiful as well. We won’t go inside because there is already a huge line and we have to wait at least an hour.

We continue to the Obelisco. It is the symbol of the city, kind of like the Liberty Statue in New York, or the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

From there we take the Calle Florida, it is a long pedestrian street with plenty of shops. It is nice to stroll down the street, despite all the clandestin exchange shops yelling “cambiooooo” every few yards.

It becomes difficult for Maider not to want to buy something as we pass all these nice boutiques. So we won’t stay too long 🙂 . We stop by a very nice cathedral, that doesn’t at all look like a cathedral from the outside.

We can’t visit the Micro-Centro without stopping by the Casa Rosada, home of the Argentinian government.

It is located on the famous Plaza de Mayo, where Argentina’s independence was signed on May 25th, 1810.

The rest of the time we spent going back to some of our favorite neighborhoods, like San Telmo for example. We went back to its market, that was a lot more quiet than on Sunday. And we even got the chance to take a picture with Mafalda, with no one around !

This is the end for Buenos Aires, where we spent almost a full week. We absolutely loved the city, and it reminds us a lot of a European capital. It is now time to go back into the nature, it has been a while… We are flying to El Calafate, from where we will stars visiting Patagonia.