SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2025

WHAT’s NEW, BUENOS AIRES?

Today’s plan was a city tour of Buenos Aires, exploring the distinct neighborhoods of Puerto Madero, Plaza de Mayo, San Telmo, and La Boca. And thankfully the weather was much more cooperative than yesterday’s rain, giving us a beautiful sunny day to walk around and explore.

We started in Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires’ sleek, modern waterfront area. Once an old port district, it’s been reinvented into a polished stretch of high-rises, upscale dining, and river views.

The Puente de la Mujer bridge immediately reminded me of the Samuel Beckett Bridge in Dublin, which is meant to resemble a Celtic harp, and just as I was thinking that, Sol let us know that this one was designed to evoke an abstract couple dancing the tango.

Incidentally, I just looked it up, and they were designed by the same architect! He’s Santiago Calatrava of Spain, who it turns out (wow, thank you Google rabbit hole) also designed the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio that I visit on day 8 of this trip! He also designed the Oculus at the WTC in downtown Manhattan among many other fabulous-looking structures around the world. I get it – he definitely has a distinct style.

After just a quick stroll around Puerto Madera, we headed over to Plaza de Mayo, BA’s center of politics, revolutions, and protests, and where Argentina declared independence and became Argentina. It’s full of different monuments and buildings that are all significant in their own way, and we walked around the square as Sol gave us the history.

The New Yorker in me loves checking out the subway systems of the world when I travel, but unfortunately losing a day meant I didn’t get to take a spin on the Subte as planned. Next time!

One of the things we first saw were these stenciled paintings of white bandanas around the whole area, which are a symbol of resistance representing the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a group of mothers who began marching in 1977 during the military dictatorship, demanding to know what happened to their children who had been “disappeared” by the regime.

We then walked over to the prominent statue of General Manuel Belgrano, the designer of the Argentine flag (sky blue and white, inspired by the colors of the Virgin Mary’s robe) and a national independence hero. Counter to all of the famous revolutionaries and protest leaders throughout Argentina’s history, he was more of an intellectual patriot who simply wanted better for his country.

Our guide Sol has a great sense of humor haha:

Around the base of his statue there’s a barrier that’s been filled with rocks: they were added during the pandemic to keep protesters and crowds from gathering too close, since Plaza de Mayo is such a political hotspot.

Over time, people started leaving memorials, signs, and mementos there, so what began as a COVID safety measure kind of evolved into a mix of public barrier and informal message wall.

Directly across from the statue is Casa Rosada (“Pink House”), the seat of Argentina’s executive branch and the place where the president works.

…Though it’s probably best known for its famous balcony, where Eva Perón — the incredibly popular wife of President Juan Perón — gave her emotional farewell address to the crowds below in August 1951. Hundreds of thousands of supporters had gathered to urge her to run for vice president alongside her husband, but she was extremely sick in the end stages of cancer and ultimately declined, delivering one of the most famous moments in Argentine history. (…and in musical theatre, depicted so beautifully in Evita.)

They don’t let you climb up to the balcony, but I of course had to take the iconic arms outstretched Evita photo in front of it. Pretty sure I’d be disowned by the theatre community if I didn’t haha.

There are like 8000 versions of this song from Evita on YouTube – Patti LuPone is of course the definitive originator, so tried to find a version of hers that was close-ish in her career to her 1979 original but still watchable (as the bootleg of the original suffers from a lot of generation loss). Don’t @ me if it’s not the best one, Glen Gillen! 😅

We then continued to walk around the main square a bit before heading to the Catedral Metropolitana de Buenos Aires.

Central in the plaza is the Pirámide de Mayo, built in 1811 to commemorate the first anniversary of Argentina’s revolution, making it the oldest national monument in Buenos Aires.

Nice view of the famous obelisk down Av. Pres. Roque Sáenz Peña, right next to the cathedral.

The cathedral doesn’t look like a church at all from the outside, more like a courthouse, but inside it was really beautiful. It’s notable because it houses the tomb of General José de San Martín, Argentina’s most revered independence hero who liberated not just Argentina, but also Chile and Peru from Spanish rule. (The tomb is flanked by statues representing these three nations he helped liberate.)

It also happened to be the home church of Pope Francis when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

There was a service going on as it was Sunday, so we quietly made our way through to admire the space and visit San Martín’s tomb before heading back out.

Directly adjacent to Plaza de Mayo is San Telmo, Buenos Aires’ oldest neighborhood. It used to be the home of the rich, and was full of mansions, until yellow fever hit in the 1870s and the rich moved to Recoleta, making space for waves of Europeans immigrants (namely Italians, Spaniards, and Jews) who moved into the abandoned homes and turned them into shared tenements. And now the neighborhood has a really multicultural, Bohemian energy and is particularly known for its Sunday market selling everything from crafts to antiques to food. Good thing we were here on a Sunday!

We were joined at this point by a specialized guide Marisa who gave us a tour of the vibrant street art of the San Telmo neighborhood.

We walked through one smaller part of the market for a little while before heading back to the bus to drive to our next stop on the tour. The stalls were really a combination of fine art, homemade crafts, and plenty of junk haha. As the best markets are.

On the bus, Sol treated us each to an alfajor from Havanna, a sweets shop chain that you see alllll over Argentina. It’s two crumbly cookies with a dulce de leche center, covered in chocolate, and it was delicious! Albeit super rich – I had a couple of bites and saved the rest for a midnight snack.

While on the bus, we also passed and learned about “Paseo de la Historieta” — basically a comic strip walk celebrating Argentina’s rich history of cartoons mixed with political commentary. The clear star of these comics, who you see EVERYWHERE, is Mafalda, a socially conscious little girl created by cartoonist Quino in the 1960s.

Gonna quote the internet here rather than bothering to summarize this: “What made Mafalda revolutionary was that she reflected the conscience of a generation. Through her, Quino managed to talk about censorship, democracy, and peace at a time when directly criticizing the government was dangerous. She became wildly popular across Latin America and Europe, and her image still appears everywhere — murals, mugs, even protest signs — as a symbol of intelligence, empathy, and resistance to injustice.”

On the bus, we passed a bunch of these characters – I’m getting pretty good at the quick through-the-bus-window shots, if I do say so myself!

We also passed a few classic tango and cultural halls, decorated on the outside with a tribute to the music and dance.

Getting back out of the bus, we then walked around together, passing more of the street fair and making a stop at an official dedication to Mafalda herself, near a statue of her on a bench that inevitably has a line to take a picture with her. We didn’t wait, though did get a picture with a different Mafalda on a bench later in the day in La Boca haha. She really is everywhere.

Totally know who Maradona is now!

Thought this was Stan Lee at first glance

The graphic designer in me really liked learning from Marisa about fileteado porteño, Buenos Aires’ most distinctive visual art style.

It started in the early 1900s when sign painters began decorating carts, buses, and shop signs with ornate lettering, swirling flourishes, ribbons, flowers, and national symbols like the Argentine flag or tango figures.

Fileteado is everywhere in San Telmo – restaurant windows, storefronts (like La Brigada here), and even on souvenirs. You recognize it by its bold 3D letters, symmetrical scrollwork, and lots of color and shading, often with little sayings or humor tucked in.

The style was so beloved it became officially recognized by UNESCO in 2015 as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity!

We spent a good amount of time here on this constantly evolving street-art wall on Calle Bolivar, sort of like an open-air community bulletin board for local and international artists. It’s a mix of graffiti, political posters, wheat-paste collages, and pop-art imagery, basically a snapshot of cultural conversation, protest art, humor, political statements, club flyers, and character art all mashed together. This wall is one example, but you see this all over in this part of San Telmo.

Finally, we made our way to a nearby food market where we were left to explore for about a half hour before meeting back up. Some people sat down and had a drink or checked out the food – I had spotted an artist at one of the nearby craft stalls as we had walked past that I knew I wanted to revisit, so Carin came with me as we found our way back to where it was.

On the way we passed a couple dancing the tango in the street and stopped to watch for a minute. It was really beautiful!

I did thankfully find my booth! The artist is Mercedes Bascary and I was in love with every single piece she made – acrobats, artists, musicians, and more, all made of paper-mache and wire. I had to make a decision (thankfully Carin was there to help me narrow it down or I could’ve stood there for an hour), and ended up with this cute little acrobat holding a flower. I love it!

We then wandered back through the streets to meet the group and bid farewell to Marisa before heading back to the bus to travel to our next neighborhood.

A charango in the wild! I looked so hard for one of these in Lima ten years ago! (And found it, but with some effort.) Guess they’re common across South America.

Our last stop on the city tour was the colorful neighborhood of La Boca. On the bus ride there, we passed the Boca Juniors football complex and stadium, a place of near-religious devotion in Argentina. Their blue & yellow colors are everywhere around here, and while there was no game that day, it’s clear that this is like a full-blown cultural identity to both the neighborhood and Argentina at large, as they are one of the top teams in the main national league.

I was thrown off by the “Juniors” thing at first and thought we were looking at like a peewee or minor league setup, not realizing this is one of the most iconic soccer teams in the country. But Juniors is just because they wanted an English word, since they were obsessed with British everything at the time, and thought that England was the epitome of modern and cosmopolitan. From everything I can find, Juniors is what they randomly chose just because it’s an English word they knew! Though it also retroactively sort of fits since it was a group of teenagers (children of the local Italian immigrants) who formed the team.

Arriving in La Boca, two things are immediately clear: this is colorful and photogenic as hell, and also very much a tourist trap haha. At least in this part.

Historically, it’s where the city began, a dockside neighborhood settled by Italian immigrants (mostly from Genoa) in the 19th century. They built homes from leftover ship materials, painting the corrugated metal walls with whatever marine paint was on hand, which is why the place is full of mismatched color. Caminito, the short pedestrian street where we were walking, is lined with those rainbow façades, a kind of open-air art installation originally restored in the 1950s by artist Benito Quinquela Martín to celebrate the neighborhood’s immigrant roots.

Culturally, La Boca is the birthplace of tango and the (I now realize very famous haha) Boca Juniors, both born from the same working-class energy. It’s the gritty heart of old Buenos Aires, but it’s also now packed with souvenir shops selling cheap mass-produced magnets and t-shirts for tourists.

It does sound there’s a more “real” La Boca with artists’ studios, community murals, and more raw local life, but it’s a few streets deeper in, where tour groups rarely go… and is apparently not exactly the safest part of Buenos Aires, especially at night. Caminito is the tourist postcard version. But hey, I am indeed a tourist and was happy to walk around and take pictures – the colorful buildings are really cool looking!

But first, we got out of the bus and headed over to a nearby restaurant for a big group lunch. It was so pretty in the courtyard!! The lunch was – surprise – steak, along with a salad, some bread and dips, wine and dessert. It was such a beautiful day and the setting was really picturesque. A lovely lunch!

After lunch, we had a little bit of time to walk around the colorful neighborhood. In the few block radius of Caminito where we wandered, it’s mostly souvenir shops along with some bars and restaurants, and the whole area is filled with more cartoon-like character sculptures, very similar to the characters we spotted around San Telmo.

Lionel Messi holding up his World Cup. There was a MAJOR line to take a picture with this in the background.

The Mount Rushmore of La Boca: Diego Maradona (who it turns out played for Boca Juniors, it’s all coming together), of course Evita, and on the right is Carlos Gardel, the legendary tango singer and actor who’s basically the Frank Sinatra of Argentina. All three died before their time, sadly.

After finishing our tour of the city, we drove back to the hotel and had a couple of hours before meeting for our evening activity: a tango lesson and tango dinner/show.

I was thinking about taking this time to squeeze in something that I had missed from my plane delay on the first day – maybe a tour of the interior of Teatro Colón, or visiting the El Ateneo bookstore – but the reality is that I was feeling the exhaustion of the first couple of days of travel and time off of work, and ended up just taking a nap and relaxing in my hotel room. Not sure if it was the right decision or not, I did really want to see those places, but it felt like the right thing at the time for sure.

That night, we all got a little dressed up, and met downstairs to be taken to Cafe de los Angelitos, a historic tango hall in the Balvanera neighborhood. The cafe has a lot of history, opening in 1890 as one of the city’s quintessential cafetines: smoky, noisy hangouts for poets, musicians, and politicians. It was especially famous because Carlos Gardel (of that waving trio of sculptures on the balcony in la Boca) used to perform there before he became the face of tango.

That said, it was rebuilt into a dinner show venue for tourists haha – so definitely some authentic tango history while also a little bit Disney-fied.

When we arrived, we were treated to a glass of wine, and met by two of the dancers from the show who were going to take us through a short tango lesson.

Sol had warned us on the bus that they were going to say that tango was “just like walking,” which is basically the first thing they said to us so we couldn’t help but laugh. But… it kind of is? (At least the few steps they taught us. The tango we’d see later in the night is definitely not just like walking.)

The whole thing was really entertaining and we all had a good laugh while learning a few moves. Our two men Mike and Syed really held their own!

Once we were tango experts, it was time to head into the theatre for our dinner. Our group divided ourselves among two long tables, and enjoyed some wine and a little cream cheese & lox tart while a waiter came around to take our orders for appetizer, entree, and dessert.

I opted for the “Northern Humita” for appetizer - a corn & cheese soup with a spicy compote on top (delicious), a pumpkin & blue cheese ravioli for my entree (really strong with the blue cheese, but good in a small quantity haha), and the pavlova for dessert (also delicious, and of course came with a dollop of dulce de leche).

(I forgot to take a picture of the space – this is from TripAdvisor)

After the meal, it was time for the show to start. We had heard it would start around 10:00, and were all feeling a bit tired (and had a really early departure time the next day to Iguazu Falls), so we were incredibly secretly grateful when it actually started a bit after 9:30.

And the show was really fabulous! They showed a variety of styles and moods of tango from seductive and sharp to elegant and graceful, sometimes with a full stage of dancers and sometimes just a featured couple. Even a little modern setting to Billie Jean. I also didn’t expect a live band and singers, but they were great too.

I also laughed during the show because on the bus on the way, Sol had said something about the dancers dressing like prostitutes, and I thought she was just being snarky, but no – there was one number where they were literally supposed to be prostitutes haha.

Some highlights from the show

After the show, we headed back to the hotel (“Hernando’s Hideaway” definitely stuck in my head for the rest of the night), and I think all immediately went to sleep, knowing we’d have a 5:30am morning ahead of us.

All in all, it a was a great full day and we squeezed a LOT of Buenos Aires in! Next stop: Iguazu Falls.