Buenos Aires
A European city that took the wrong continent — and where dinner starts at ten
- When to go
- September 15° · 6 rainy days
- Per day
- €€€price 3 of 5
- How many days
- 5days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 7 km Aeroparque · 27 km Ezeiza
- Right now
Buenos Aires is visited by district and by clock: San Telmo and Recoleta in the morning, Palermo in the afternoon and at night, and a restaurant before nine in the evening is empty because dinner here is at ten. Plan it on a European schedule and you will spend the evening waiting for the city to start.
Money stopped being the subject in 2025: controls were lifted that April, a card charges at the market rate, and the old advice to bring cash dollars into town no longer applies.
The underground is called the subte, opened in 1913, and is the oldest in South America. A ride is €1 with a registered SUBE card, and the city has decided the fare rises every month through 2026. The card is bought at a kiosk and topped up at the station; the same one works on buses, of which there are more than metro lines and which run all night.
The city is walked more than people expect: Recoleta to Palermo is half an hour on foot, to San Telmo forty minutes. The bus is the answer to anything longer — over a hundred and fifty lines, running around the clock, and you tell the driver your stop so the fare can be set by zone.
Guides for Buenos Aires
Shorter, practical pages for one concrete question each — how many days, how much money, where to sleep, where to escape the city.
Buenos Aires in 5 days
→Five days by district, in a city whose day runs two hours late — and where a restaurant at eight is empty for a reason.
Where to stay in Buenos Aires
→Palermo, Recoleta, San Telmo or the centre — four districts that change how many times a day you go underground.
What Buenos Aires costs
→A city where transport is negligible and the bed and the dinner are the whole budget — and where figures go stale…
What to eat in Buenos Aires
→A city where meat cooks for hours and one person stands at the grill — and nobody interferes.
What to see in Buenos Aires
Recoleta
A cemetery of four thousand mausoleums laid out like city streets, holding Eva Perón. Entry is charged and a map is worth taking — without one you will not find her grave. Around it lies the most expensive quarter in the city.
San Telmo
The oldest quarter, cobbled, with an antiques market that spills down the whole of Defensa street on Sundays. Tango is danced in the square here, free, and it beats most paid shows.
Caminito and La Boca
A street of painted tin houses in the port district, coloured with leftover ship paint. It is thoroughly touristy, visited by day and within a few blocks — you do not walk further. The Bombonera stadium is opposite.
Palermo
The largest district, split into Soho and Hollywood, with parks, restaurants and bars. This is where you have dinner and go out, and where most of the non-hotel accommodation is.
The Teatro Colón
A 1908 opera house with some of the best acoustics anywhere. The tour is fifty minutes and runs daily; a gallery seat for a performance costs less than the tour.
Tigre and the Paraná delta
An hour north by train, where the river splits into hundreds of channels with stilt houses reachable only by boat. A day trip, and the only way to see a suburb with no streets.
Two things you probably did not know
The El Ateneo Grand Splendid bookshop occupies a theatre from 1919, with boxes to read in and a cafe on the stage. It is regularly named the most beautiful bookshop in the world.
The Recoleta cemetery is a town in miniature, with over four thousand mausoleums along paved streets. Eva Peron is buried there; after her death her body spent fourteen years in Milan, buried under another name.
Ready for Buenos Aires?
Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from Buenos Aires — day trips or weekends.
Argentina
→A country 3,700 kilometres long, where the far south is seen in December and the whales and the snow in August
Chile
→A country 4,300 kilometres long and 180 wide — driest desert on earth to glacier, without a single turn
Brazil
→A country where the flight between two cities is often cheaper, and always faster, than the overnight coach
All 277 places we write about sit on one page — narrow them down by continent, country, price or what you are travelling for.
Within reach from here: Mendoza, Foz do Iguaçu and Santiago
See how much of that actually suits you — or pin Buenos Aires if you have been.
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