Buenos Aires

Can't say enough good things about Buenos Aires. If you want to visit a place that has the endless restaurants, coffee shops, and bars of NYC, but cleaner and prettier, Buenos Aires is your place. A few pointers to keep in mind before you arrive. Please read the Argentina page for some general things about Argentina.

Enjoy my google maps of recs. Save this to your profile and then you can hit the different spots as you walk around.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/jgi5CPNdhQoqDQHy5

Transit

Public Transit: Subway and public transit is an amazing way to get around but it took me about 2 hours to get my "sube card". There is a bit of a shortage and while the convenience stores are suppose to have them, I went to 3 in a row that were out. I went to a less busy subway station and they had a bunch, it costs ~1.5 dollars to purchase the card and then I used the machine to load it up with cash. Its a pain in the ass, I still haven't figured out how to use a credit card or internet to do you. If you don't want to use the machine (its slow) you can ask the staff at the window of the subway to upload cash.

On the buses, some people will give you a swipe if you give them cash. The annoying thing with buses is you are suppose to tell the driver where you are going so they can put in the proper fare, but apparently this only applies if you are taking the bus far outside of the city center. I had no issues just tapping it without tell the driver anything.

You get a discount if you register your card.

Bike Share: The bike share is dumb, same as rio. Whoever is running these things are stupid and don't want to make money. Both let me register but won't take my credit cards. If someone finds out the trick, tell me. Otherwise I'd just rent a bike through some agency.

Uber: Highly reccomend it here. Taxis try to rip everyone off, every time I tried to get a taxi, they said it would be 20 bucks for a ride that was 5 dollars on uber. I tried to negotiate down to 15 and they wouldn't budget so I just called an uber. I suppose if I asked them to use the meter it wouldn't cost as much. Once we had an uber ask to be paid in cash; this isn't necessarily a scam, sometimes uber takes days to pay their drivers. Still unclear if my friend got double charged.

Tipping

This was the hardest one for me to figure out. With dining in buenos aires, they car so much about the experience that unless its a touristy place, they don't ask for the tip, but its expected for good service, you just have to tell them to add it. Easiest way for me was to carry a bunch of one dollar bills around (and trust me, you'll get these at your first currency exchange) and just pay them cash. Otherwise you have to ask them to add the dollar amount to the bill, and its unclear to me how the restaurant actually separates this out.

Apparently ubers and taxis aren't expected to be tipped, but fail to see how the ubers are making money so I tipped them 20%, hell it was a 6 dollar ride.

I'm not rich enough to run into the conundrum of tipping people that help you out with luggage at hotels and such.

Airports

There is Aeroparque (AEP) and and Ezeiza (EZE), fly into AEP if you can, as its right in the city and very close to everything, most international flights will fly into EZE, it will be a $30 dollar uber to go from EZE to downtown Buenos Aires.

Housing

I stayed in a hostel on my first trip and an airbnb on the my second. The airbnb gives so much better value. I paid 25-30 bucks a night for a bed in a room with 8 others and I paid 55 a night for a penthouse apartment overlooking the zoo. The social activities at the hostel were fun and I met lots of cool people, but once you figure out the places to go out in buenos aires, the cons of the hostel outweigh the positives by far. Hotels were over 100 a night.

Neighborhoods

Palermo: You've probably heard about this one the most. Its the posh, williamburgs mixed with soho with tons of night life and cofee shops and such. You'll run into a lot of english speakers and transplants here. Palermo is pretty big. The main part is Palermo Soho and its centered around Plaza Serrano, which is surrounded by touristy bars and restaurants, but everything is pretty cool as you get right outside of the plaza. Palermo Hollywood is to the west, lots of cool stuff there.

You then have the north side of palermo that is a lot quieter and has a bunch of lovely parks, zoos, museums, etc. I stayed on the east side of this, which I think is called Palermo Chico, and has the Museum de arte de latinamericano. I was going to palermo soho a lot to eat, go out, and go to my gym, so it was really annoying to be in palermo chico having to walk 15/20 minutes to get to these things. but the parks are gorgeous!

Can't go wrong staying here, but you might long to interact with like real people.

Recoleta: To the east of palermo, has the really famous cemetary and tons of really fancy buildings. Enough to do but quiet if you like that sort of thing. I believe I saw a lot of embassys here.

Centro: This is their business and political district. You'll see all the big fancy government buildings and people out and about having real jobs. I liked it. You also have the university of buenos aires here, which has like 300k students, I believe they tend to go out in monserrat/san telmo. The obelisk is here too. You also have florida street, which is a huge shopping street with endless stores.

San Telmo/monserrat: I'm still about confused over whats san telmo and whats monserrat (monserrat being the north side). I think my hostel was technically in monserrat, and the energy on the main street was insane when I arrived. I loved walking around here, idk, felt more raw. The San Telmo market felt very touristy and I dind't like it, but the bars/restaurants on the east side were cool, the west side was a ghost town. Area was kinda sketch at night but I didn't find to bad, but there were drunk dudes I tried to avoid. I really liked staying here though as it felt alive and it was a short walk to centro.

La Boca: Yeah it has charm but mostly instagram princesses posing for photos. The big soccer stadium for boca juniors is there and you can get tours. There are some tango dances in the street. Don't stay here. It shuts down at night and can be sketch.

Belgrano: Just to the west of palermo. The largest stadium in south america is there, estadio mas monumental. Looked really fancy when I picked up my ticket. I'll update after I see the game today.