Feb 22, 2023
We arrived in Buenos Aires on a Wednesday morning. We didn’t realize how easy it is to travel to South America from Florida. Our total trip time from takeoff in Pensacola to landing in Buenos airport was 11 hours. We have met others on this trip whose trips took 22 to 30 hours with many connections and layovers.
The nighttime flight from Pensacola to Buenos Aires was easy and we slept most of the trip. Buenos Aires is 3 hours ahead of US central time, so jet lag is not much of an issue. The only slight hiccup was that our very full carry-on bags did not fit in the overhead compartment on first flight. Because we were in first class (thank you AA for the upgrade) they let us gate check. Not sure what the options would have been if we were in coach seats. We worked hard to pack for five weeks in one carry-on suitcase and one backpack for each of us. We may not be the most stylish passengers on this cruise but we will travel easier.
Getting through the airport was easy and within 30 minutes of touching down, we were outside waiting for our pre-arranged ride.
We are staying in the neighborhood of Recoletta, which is one of the city’s more upscale communities. We are very happy with our hotel choice, Melia Recoletta Plaza. Rooms are decent size, location is great, bed is comfortable, a nice breakfast is included and there is air conditioning. The room rates are reasonable when we booked in USD. But they are about 30% less if you convert dollars to pesos and pay in cash. The money situation here is very different than most other places we have traveled. Inflation is high and there is an official rate for converting dollars and the blue rate offered to tourists. Do your homework if you plan to travel to Argentina – just don’t assume paying with credit cards and/or using ATM machines is the best use of your precious dollars. The largest bill they have here is 1000 pesos, equivalent of $5 at the official rate. I changed 500USD on our first day and could not fit the bills in my moneybelt. In the photo below is what you get in pesos for $100.
With only five nights in Argentina’s capital city, we want to hit the highlights. So we hit the ground running once we got settled in the room. We set off on foot to explore the neighborhood. We popped into the city’s fine arts museum Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. It was a combination of the old European masters, Argentine art, archealogical pieces from the Americas and some modern pieces. The museum was free on Wednesday.
The city is filled with these huge gorgeous trees that must be hundreds of years old. They might be ombu trees. We have seen many in this Recoleta neighborhood. Wish I had time to photograph more of these trees.
Lunch was at El Sanjuanino known for their empanadas. The restaurant is literally next door to our hotel and was finer dining than we expected and overall a nice lunch.
After a great rest, we headed out in the evening to explore the Recoleta neighborhood. There are many public areas – parks, cultural centers etc that are for the locals and not the tourists. The area was filled with locals out strolling, walking their dogs and having picnics. We went into this unusual complex that used to be living quarters for the monks and is now a cultural center (Centro Cultural Recoleta). It has a science museum, event venues, exhibitions, maker rooms, classrooms. In the back was a colorful building and a place for locals to just hang out. The views weren’t spectacular but we surmised that the residents of the nearby apartment buildings came her to have an outdoor space to socialize. Street art (graffitti) is prolific in BA. We are booked on a street art tour on Friday to see the highlights.
There is a Catholic church next to the famous Recoletta Cemetery, Basílica Nuestra Señora del Pilar. While we were there, we watched a procession for Ash Wednesday with priest, altar boys and hundreds of parishioners heading in for mass just as the sun was setting. It is nice to see that people still go to church. The neighborhood was named for the nuns who first settled here – it was the yard for the church that eventually became the city’s first cemetery in 1822.
The rest of the evening was focused on eating, of course. A steak dinner at a parilla (steakhouse). We had made reservations at Madre Rojas before we arrived, based on a recommendation from Erin who runs a blog about Argentina and Buenos Aires (solsalute.com). The meats here so far have been excellent. We are trying not to overindulge on steaks, wine and desserts. We ordered a bottle of pinot noir, a chorizo sausage (nothing like the US/Mexican chorizo), a fancy mashed potatoe dish (Puré de papas), a grilled cheese similar to saganaki (provoleta) pictured below, a piece of steak (vacio), a mixed salad that was okay. Overall a nice dinner, excellent service – we initialy struggled with the menu because the food items here are all new to us and our first waitress spoke no English and my limited spanish wasn’t helpful with the menu. Pictured below is the
We get around using Uber. It is really cheap and works well. Drivers arrive within 5 minutes of ordering and we can pay in cash to get the best use of our pesos. A 20 minute ride across town is $6 or $7. A short ride of a few KM can be as little as $2. We are not even going to bother figuring out the public transportation in this sprawling city.
Thursday Feb 23
Our first full day was a bike tour through the southern part of the city and sunset happy hour at a rooftop bar. The bike ride covered a lot of ground over 4 1/2 hours. We like to do bike tours when we travel. This city was surprisingly easy to get around with dedicated bike lanes on most roads and mostly flat. We booked with BA BIke Argentina and we were very happy with their lightweight bikes, the route they took us on and the guide (Fabi). They even provided helmets which we didn’t get in Barcelona last fall. We saw many of the city’s historical places as well as the soccer stadium, the Plaza de Mayo, historic towns of San Telmo and La Boca. We rode down some of the very wide avenues. And only one hill that I had to struggle to get up at Plaza de Mayo. We learned a bit about the history of the city as well as the country including the brutality of the dictatorship during the second half of the 20th century. It was a great way to see a lot of the city which is way too big to see on a walking tour.
The bike ride was fun but we were tired by the end. Glad to chill in the room in the afternoon before heading out for the evening. We had no dinner plans but wanted to see the sunset from a rooftop bar. We chose the Sky Bar on top of a hotel. The views of the surrounding buildings were nothing to write home about but the sunset colors were beautiful, the drinks and tapas excellent. And we met a lovely couple from Estonia who have been traveling through South America. We ended up sitting together and sharing stories. Great fun to meet new people when you are traveling and hearing their life stories.
Sunset view from the Sky Bar