36 Hours
36 Hours in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital, can feel overwhelming. Main thoroughfares like Avenida Santa Fe are noisy and jammed with zooming taxis and groaning buses. The streets can get grimy. But elegance is everywhere and accessible to visitors. Beaux-Arts buildings along Avenida de Mayo recall the grandeur of old Europe. You can find affordable, handcrafted goods at artisan fairs that abound on weekends in neighborhoods like San Telmo, Recoleta and Mataderos. The afterglow of Argentina’s 2022 World Cup victory remains — a spiritual salve for many still suffering from the country’s yearslong inflation crisis. Visitors will find a city where people press on. It is that perseverance that keeps Buenos Aires vibrant and thrilling.
Recommendations
- Ecoparque, a former zoo, is now a nature preserve where many animals roam free.
- Borges 1975 is a bookshop with a restaurant and bar, as well as an intimate back room that hosts jazz acts every week.
- La Alacena Pastificio y Salumeria is a cozy restaurant where you can watch pasta makers rolling and cutting fresh rigatoni, gnocchi and ravioli.
- Jessica Kessel is a boutique selling funky, colorful leather shoes, including heels, boots, mules and flats.
- Palacio de las Aguas Corrientes, the city’s water pumping station, is an opulent example of the city’s striking architecture and houses the affectionately nicknamed “Toilet Museum.”
- El Zanjón is a cavernous and unusual museum that takes you through part of the city’s underground tunnels and explores the country’s history of slavery.
- La Casa Mínima, the narrowest house in Buenos Aires, is steps from El Zanjón.
- Parque Centenario is a quiet oasis of trees and a large lake in Caballito with a quirky Saturday fair that offers secondhand clothes and handmade crafts.
- Roux offers inventive fine dining, with produce sourced from all over Argentina.
- Estilo Campo, a steakhouse in Puerto Madero, serves expertly prepared chorizo and crispy sweetbreads away from the crowds along the Río de la Plata riverbank.
- Mercat Villa Crespo is a food market in a refurbished industrial space selling empanadas, steak, falafel, vegan ice cream and more.
- Quotidiano Bar de Pastas in Recoleta draws crowds for its pasta and is also a great spot for breakfast and Argentine pastries filled with dulce de leche.
- Presidente Bar, in one of the most affluent parts of the city, is a beautiful drinking spot that manages not to take itself too seriously.
- Corchio, which has sweet, buttery pastries and great coffee, is a perfect snack stop as you shop in Recoleta.
- Guido, one of the oldest and best-known shoe shops in the city, also sells purses, luggage and wallets.
- Lopez Taibo specializes in leather goods for men and women, including jackets, shoes and belts.
- El Ateneo Grand Splendid is a glorious bookstore in an old cinema that has kept the theater’s ornate designs in place.
- Alvear Palace Hotel in Recoleta remains one of the city’s most elegant and beautiful hotels, with a rooftop bar that has tremendous panoramic views of Buenos Aires. Doubles from around $370 (hotels generally list prices in U.S. dollars). Nonguests should still visit the bar and order the Malbec Sour, a refreshing cocktail that might remind you of a strong Lambrusco.
- Ribera Sur Hotel in San Telmo, the oldest neighborhood in the city, has comfortable, simply designed rooms that start at $95 a night, including an indulgent breakfast. It is two blocks from Calle Defensa, where every Sunday, thousands of people come from around the city to haggle at an open-air antique market.
- Malevo Muraña Hostel, a cheerful, comfortable hostel in Palermo with a charming outdoor patio and colorful décor, offers shared dorms from about $40 a person and private rooms that fit up to four people from $140 a night. The hostel is on one of the quieter streets of a neighborhood that becomes very loud at night.
- For short-term rentals, Recoleta and Palermo, safe, walkable neighborhoods teeming with boutiques, pasta shops, and cheese and wine shops, are the best locations for exploring such a vast city.
- Taxis are largely safe, but typically take cash only. (It’s best to avoid taxis outside the international airport. Instead, find the kiosk for Taxi Ezeiza, the official airport taxi service.) Uber is also available. The city’s system of buses and subways is vast and inexpensive, but can be confusing (download the navigation app Cómo Llego). Sube cards, which you need to ride the system, are available at most kioskos, the ubiquitous candy stands.
- The Argentine peso is unstable and weak. There is an official rate, but many U.S. travelers seek out the black-market “blue dollar” rate that is usually twice as favorable. Since late 2022, tourists can also benefit from a preferential exchange rate on foreign Mastercard and Visa credit and debit cards, which is close to the blue-dollar rate. Some stores and restaurants will accept U.S. dollars, another way of getting the blue-dollar rate.
Itinerary
Friday
Saturday
Sunday