As a not-particularly-seasoned traveler in South America, if you ask me which city on this continent is my favorite, the answer comes out instantly: Buenos Aires.

In fact, among the travelers I met along the way, the answer was surprisingly consistent.

01. Spring in Buenos Aires

The first thing that comes to mind is the flowers of Buenos Aires.

In spring, the streets of the city are full of small pink blossoms called Lapacho. Their Chinese name is beautiful too: purple trumpet tree.

They bloom in such profusion that they seem to flood the streets in the colors of sunrise and sunset. From late winter to early spring, you suddenly look up and see those richly saturated pinks, and only then realize that spring has quietly arrived.

My most vivid memory is of a sunny afternoon in a small park in Palermo: a Lapacho tree blooming with complete abandon, and people whispering beneath it.

And a girl with a little dog.

Maybe what I love most about Buenos Aires is Palermo. It’s a fairly large neighborhood, a place that seems to have no tourist attractions at all—and somehow everything at once.

Along its narrow cobblestone streets are endless charming little restaurants, cafes, bookstores, bars, yoga studios, boutiques, and nightclubs. It’s lively from morning till night.

Some of the best souvenirs I picked up on the trip were bought in Palermo; Buenos Aires’s reputation for abundance is well deserved.

The masters loved spring here too. Rubinstein once lived here, and compared with war-torn Europe, this must have felt like paradise. Piazzolla even wrote a piece for The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, the “Spring” movement, bright and cheerful.

Sitting beneath dappled tree shade on the street and slowly enjoying a brunch is probably the best expression of Palermo life.

Most of Palermo’s buildings are European-style mansions, because Buenos Aires is a city built by European immigrants. The neighborhood’s Plaza Sicilia, Plaza Alemania, and Plaza Holanda are perhaps signs of deep homesickness for springs back home—so they simply recreated one on the other side of the world.

02. A Paradise for Meat Lovers

Palermo is also home to Don Julio, one of the best steakhouses in Latin America. My love of meat is probably the second reason I love Buenos Aires. For carnivores, this place is paradise.

Beef is a non-negotiable way of life for Argentines. In fact, if you had to choose one national dish for Argentina, it would undoubtedly be Parilla.

Parilla originally refers to the grill itself. The steaks here aren’t like the neat little slices served in French restaurants; they’re more like grilled meat, bold and rugged even at Michelin-starred places.

At Don Julio, the beef is aged for at least three weeks and then grilled over open flame. It’s made with swagger, and it makes you eat with swagger too.

Thanks to the exchange rate, how much did this meal cost? Just 200 yuan per person, at the top restaurant on Latin America’s 50 Best list!

And if you buy beef at another restaurant or a supermarket and cook it yourself, it’s even cheaper. These two huge steaks cost about RMB 10 total, which is how I ended up eating an absurd amount of meat in Buenos Aires.

I’ve heard that Argentine beef exports back to China have surged in recent years, so now we too can achieve the same “beef freedom” as people in Buenos Aires.

My host told me there are three things you should never argue about with people from Buenos Aires: Parilla (barbecue), Política (politics), and Fútbol (soccer).

03. Boca

Speaking of soccer, even Taylor Swift loves Buenos Aires! One of the only four stops on her Latin American tour was at Estadio Monumental.

Estadio Monumental belongs to River Plate, but compared with the middle-class darling River Plate, I prefer Boca—mainly because I couldn’t get River Plate tickets.

Whether loving soccer came before loving Buenos Aires or the other way around is a chicken-and-egg question, but soccer is the city’s eternal theme.

Boca represents the city’s passion, exuberance, and wildness, and Boca’s colors are intoxicating.

Whenever there’s a match at night, the whole area turns into one giant carnival. Blue-and-yellow waves pour in from every direction, flowing around the legendary stadium known as La Bombonera, the Chocolate Box.

Sitting beside me were three generations of Boca fans—a grandfather, a father, and a son. Soccer runs through their veins.

Boca is so important that after President Milei cast his vote in the national election, he still had to line up obediently to vote in the Boca club presidential election.

I watched two matches in Buenos Aires: a League Cup match, which they won, and the much more important Copa Libertadores final, which they lost. There was laughter, and there was heartbreak.

But as one Boca fan told me, aunque ganes o pierdas no me importa una mierdo, sigo siendo bostero porque a BofA lo quiero! Winning or losing doesn’t matter; we’re still proud, because what matters is that we love Boca!

04. A Cemetery

I stayed in an apartment in Recoleta. It was in a prime location, and though the building was old, it was clean, bright, and well kept. The host was a young person like us, struggling to afford buying a home, so they lived in this old apartment left behind by their grandmother.

Recoleta is Buenos Aires’s wealthy district. Compared with neighboring Palermo, it has the same European-style architecture, but it feels heavier, more settled, and full of old-money character.

What does old money look like? It’s when even a bookstore is so ornate it almost dazzles you.

And yet at the center of the neighborhood is a cemetery. If it weren’t for the ticketing and entrance check at the gate, you might walk inside and think it looked no different from the streets outside.

BofA

Back then, social elites in the capital and aristocrats from across the country all chose to buy their final house here. They spared no effort and no expense in designing the home where they would spend eternity.

Even though New Maiden Cemetery had already raised my threshold for “a cemetery can look like this,” compared with this place, the tsars still seem like nouveaux riches.

When a cemetery becomes this luxurious and extravagant, can it even still be called a cemetery? It’s practically a miniature city, a city within a city.

The people buried here probably never imagined that this cemetery would become the place that preserves the last trace of Buenos Aires’s old-money aura, holding on to the fading glory of a golden age while crowds of visitors stream through. Listening every day to the chatter of dozens of different languages, I imagine they’re not too lonely.

Just outside the cemetery are modern residential blocks and shopping centers, where the living and the dead are next-door neighbors. One night after a movie, I walked back late: on my left, outside the wall, people were celebrating the weekend at a row of lively little bars; on my right, inside the wall, people lay in silent rest.

05. It’s Almost Too Lively Here

But the quiet is mostly limited to the cemetery.

If you love art, you’d probably fall for life in Buenos Aires too. The city has some of the best art museums in South America, including MALBA, the Museum of Latin American Art.

Both the exterior design and the interior spaces feel very modern, and the special exhibitions are usually quite interesting too.

Nearby, the National Museum of Fine Arts feels like a more composed elder—formal, meticulous, and impeccable.

There are so many museums that some get wonderfully odd. For example, the grand Palacio de Aguas Corrientes houses a collection of hundreds upon hundreds of toilets!

Some old mansions once owned by aristocratic families have also been turned into museums, and one of my favorites is among them.

Casa Fernández Blanco: an entire room filled with dolls. Even a rich second-generation heir’s make-believe playroom can be wildly distinctive, haha.

After you’ve had your fill of museums, how about spending 20 bucks to catch a performance at a lavish opera house?

I listened to Turandot at Teatro Colón, often mentioned alongside the Met and La Scala. When “Jasmine Flower” began to play, I unexpectedly felt a little homesick.

Buenos Aires on the weekend can be summed up in one word: loud. The avenue below my apartment was often the center of the action, and every few days I’d see people marching past holding up portraits of Che Guevara.

On the day of the final, the whole city was also celebrating another festival—the one too sensitive to name back home (its symbol is the rainbow). It was unbelievably lively; the noise and crowds never let up all day. The streets were so jammed that I could barely even get through the door downstairs.

06. Weekend Market

Of course, I also miss the market in San Telmo. Every Sunday felt like an unpredictable treasure hunt.

San Telmo is actually the oldest neighborhood in Buenos Aires. It’s just that epidemics used to break out there so often that the wealthy gradually moved away to Recoleta.

Its weathered cobblestone streets, low-rise European-style buildings, and creaky trams are Buenos Aires in its purest form.

Unknown painters, leather craftsmen, old stamp dealers, washed-up musicians, fast-food vendors... all kinds of characters come together to make this colorful market, and they may be even more interesting than the goods laid out on the stalls.

Argentina’s economy hasn’t been doing well, so many people have started selling off family heirlooms. If you’re lucky, you might really score a bargain from an Argentine seller.

By the time I got here, I’ve probably only covered about 3.14% of the good life in Buenos Aires. I’ll save the rest for later.

Get ready to come back with me next time to this city of good winds.

About the Author

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