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🇦🇷 City · Argentina
Buenos Aires: tango, bookshops and nostalgia
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Nicknamed the Paris of the South, Buenos Aires charms with its contrasting neighbourhoods. Recoleta, the most elegant and European, lines up tree-shaded avenues, refined cafés and its famous cemetery. San Telmo, the oldest barrio, blends cobblestones, antique shops and impromptu tango on Plaza Dorrego, where a large market spreads along Calle Defensa each Sunday. Palermo, the biggest district, splits into sub-barrios: Palermo Soho with its trendy boutiques, Palermo Hollywood with its bars, and vast parks designed by Charles Thays. La Boca, colourful and working-class, owes its fame to the Caminito and its painted sheet-metal houses left by Genoese immigrants. A city of cafés, bookshops and milongas, Buenos Aires is best savoured on foot, at an unhurried pace.
“The Secret in Their Eyes” (2009), Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, stages its wildest scene: a breathless chase through the stands of Huracan club's Estadio Tomas Duco.
The city has more bookstores per capita than anywhere on earth; the loveliest, El Ateneo Grand Splendid, fills a 1919 theatre with a fresco-painted dome.
Behind a cold-room door at the back of a florist on Arroyo street hides Floreria Atlantico, a cocktail bar ranked among the world's best.
Spring (September to November) is ideal: mild temperatures of 15 to 25°C and blooming jacarandas that wash Palermo in purple. To get around, the Subte, Latin America's first metro opened in 1913, is fast and cheap with six lines; both buses and metro require the rechargeable SUBE card, sold at kiosks and stations. One tip: save Sunday for the San Telmo market. As for connectivity, 4G covers the capital well and free wifi is common in cafés and restaurants, though speeds can vary.