THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 – SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2025

Resting places, artSY spaces, friendly faces

As I’ve travelled over the years, over-planner me usually has backup plans on backup plans, and I’ve been lucky to only have a couple of small-ish hiccups in my travels. My luck was bound to run out eventually… and this was that time.

I had planned on a Thursday night overnight flight from NYC direct to Buenos Aires that would get me in around 10:15am on Friday, giving me most of the day and the next day to explore the city on my own before the Flash Pack tour started on Saturday night. Unfortunately, what started as a one-hour flight delay on Thursday night (no big deal) turned into a delay to 2:00am… and then a delay until noon the next day. I had just dragged my suitcase and heavy carry-on on this exceptionally humid day via walking/train/AirTrain (the UN was in session so my usual route of taking a car from my apartment to Grand Central was a lost cause with all of the roads closed around there), and got the alert about the next-day delay literally as I stepped off the AirTrain into JFK, so needless to say I was crushed on top of being physically spent from the long commute.

I explored every possible option, but there was just no other way to get to Buenos Aires sooner, which meant I’d miss all of Friday and arrive in the middle of the night that night. I was pretty bummed as I had a full day planned, including tickets to see the Buenos Aires Philharmonic at the iconic Teatro Colón on Friday night, and while I thought the 10-hour travel buffer would have been enough for that show, unfortunately there was just no way I’d be able to go. It meant also missing the famous El Ateneo bookstore, the Jewish Museum, a notorious local empanada shop, and a few artsy shops… I guess I will just have to visit Buenos Aires another time!

American Airlines won’t provide a hotel if you’re local, but they did provide a car service to take me back home for the night and then pick me up the next day. It was relatively uneventful, though I did have a pretty memorable moment: As I was sitting in the car at the airport with one other woman, waiting for two other passengers on the same delayed flight, the driver left and went into the airport for a while… to go to the bathroom, to find them… not sure. The woman and I were talking when we felt something bang into the car (!) and then when I turned around to look, there was a tow truck there with a forklift that started picking up the whole car with us in it!! I know JFK is strict about their pickup/dropoff lanes, but that was definitely a first. I opened the door and must have looked totally shocked as I made eye contact with the tow truck driver, as he quickly put us down and drove away. But I think we were on our way to get impounded!

The one little upside to this travel bummer is that I had scored a last minute cheap upgrade to business class for the flight, so got back to the airport earlier than planned on Friday to enjoy American’s Greenwich Lounge at JFK. I’m not usually a lounge person, so it was enjoyable to explore, and this one seemed to go on forever with room after room!

Little beet & ricotta toast snack before flying

Delayed an extra hour, naturally!

Didn't expect RHAP to show up!

Settled in for my flight with a randomly good hair day

Salad and a sweet potato cake thing

Steak with potatoes and brussels sprouts

Caramel tart

Landing in Buenos Aires around 1:00am, I made my way through a quick passport control and got my bag before meeting the Flash Pack driver who was taking me to our hotel. Despite it being really late and really rainy, he was very charming and gave me an enthusiastic overview of Buenos Aires. Though I did think he might actually leave me on the side of the road at one point for not knowing who Argentinian soccer legend Diego Maradona was. My bad. 😬

I snapped some pictures out the window along the way, of a giant Lionel Messi mural (I’ve heard of him!) and Buenos Aires’ famous central obelisk.

We eventually made it to our hotel, the NH Collection Buenos Aires Jousten, a polished but unpretentious spot in the city’s historic Microcentro business district. Checking in around 2:30am I was definitely ready to go right to sleep!

(Took this the next day)

Waking up on Saturday, I headed down to enjoy the hotel breakfast right before it closed. Breakfast is not a usual thing for me, but this trip was already unusual haha, so why not. It was a pretty impressive spread! I looooove dulce de leche so was excited that I knew it’d be absolutely everywhere in Argentina, and breakfast was no exception.

After breakfast, I messaged in our group’s WhatsApp group to see what any of the other early arrivals were planning. A few people wanted to visit the famous Recoleta Cemetery as well as the art museum MALBA (both of which had already been in my Saturday plans), so we ended up all traveling together. It was a rainy day and the cemetery was a decent walk from our hotel, so we took taxis to get there.

Recoleta Cemetery is basically Buenos Aires’ dramatic neighborhood for the dead, a maze of elaborate mausoleums, marble angels, and family tombs. It’s where Argentina’s elite are buried, including beloved city icon Eva Perón, whose flower-covered tomb is arguably the biggest draw here for tourists.

We strolled around without any real agenda, just taking in the ornate sculptures and overall vibe.

Somewhere in the middle of the cemetery is Evita’s grave. It’s pretty minimalist compared to some of the really elaborate mausoleums around, though definitely the most crowded with tourists looking to see where she’s buried.

Leaving the cemetery, our next stop was MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires), the city’s famous contemporary art museum. In my original plan for myself, I was planning to walk to MALBA along the famous Avenue Presidente Figueroa Alcorta, stopping at the popular weekend craft market that’s outside the cemetery and then at this cool looking giant kinetic metal flower sculpture called Floris Generalis, but given the rain and timing the group wanted to understandably take a taxi there. So we grabbed a couple of cabs and made our way to the east side of the trendy Palermo neighborhood.

Arriving at the museum, we first stopped to grab lunch at the museum’s cafe Coronado. Particularly excellent burger! And an indulgent espresso martini since a few of us were having drinks, and I definitely needed the caffeine hit from my late arrival last night.

(Picture of the inside even though we ate outside under their tent. Which I failed to take a picture of and can’t find online. Oh well.)

We then headed into the museum, known for its collection of modern and contemporary Latin American art, featuring stars like Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Antonio Berni.

The first thing you see when you walk in to the permanent collection: Maria Martins’ giant “O Impossible,” a bronze sculpture of two figures trying (and failing) to embrace. People like to gossip that it’s about her affair with Marcel Duchamp, who was also obsessed with the idea of the unattainable.

We were all pretty enamored by this one piece “Calibero (Skull) No. 5” by the art collective Mondongo. It’s pretty big, and made of plasticine with tons of little symbolic scenes making up the entire skull. Brain made of sheep, corporations (hi there, NBC) on the teeth representing our diet... it’s not exactly subtle, but there was so much to look at! Really mesmerizing.

After seeing the permanent collection, we then headed up to the next floor to see the current temporary exhibition: Liliana Porter: Travesía.

It’s a retrospective of sixty years of Buenos Aires native Porter’s offbeat imagination. Tiny figurines and surreal scenes, using small, everyday moments as a metaphor for time, memory, and how we try to fix what’s broken. (Did I pick up on that metaphor? Not really. But thank you curators for spelling it out.)

And finally we went down to the ground floor for a quick walk through the other temporary exhibition, local artist Carrie Bencardino’s “The devil's burial.”

Finishing looking at the art, we took a quick spin through the gift shop before catching a cab back to the hotel to get ready for our group intro and dinner.

That night, we met downstairs in the hotel restaurant for a welcome glass of wine and an introduction to our Flash Pack guide who would be with us in Argentina. This is the second time now I’ve done the dumb American misgender thing, as we were introduced to Sol via our WhatsApp group a few days before, and I was absolutely expecting to meet a man. So took me a second to process when this nice woman introduced herself. Whoops!

I never love to be paparazzi on night one before I know these people haha, so took some stealth photos just for the memory.

After introductions to Sol and our 15-person group (minus poor Carin who unfortunately was dealing with a plane delay that would get her in later that night), we headed out together for our first activity on the itinerary: an Argentinian cooking class.

We were getting on the bus but stopped and got out to take a picture because look at this beautiful sunset behind the obelisk! …With a beautiful dumpster front and center haha. I’m sure there’s a metaphor for the state of the world in there somewhere.

On the bus ride to Palermo and our cooking class, we passed a couple of famous sights while Sol gave us some Buenos Aires history and a crash course in empanadas.

We ended up driving right past the Floris Generalis sculpture that I had really wanted to see. We sped right by and I caught this at the last second when I realized – kind of fond of this weirdly moody photo.

We stopped at a light at the Monumento de los Españoles, a gift from Spain to Argentina to celebrate the 1910 centennial of the May Revolution (Argentina’s first step toward independence)

Sol taking us through some images in a cooking magazine

I always think a cooking class is a great way to get to know a group of people really quickly, and this was no exception. We had a lot of fun making the meal, and it turned out to be really delicious too! We were making both steak and mushroom empanadas, along with Brazilian cheese bread, and dulce de leche flan. And the cooking instructors also prepared a beef tenderloin and roasted vegetables as part of the dinner.

We started out trying Vermouth Vincenzo served over ice with soda and an orange slice, a classic Argentine pre-dinner drink, before learning the basics of what we’d be prepping and then making.

We each had an opportunity to handle different parts of the prep… I was dicing bell peppers at first, then making the veggie part of what would be the beef empanada. (And frankly happy about that haha – I’m not a vegetarian but can’t say I ever really love cooking meat, so was more than happy to have my task be vegetables.)