City trip to Buenos Aires

As I was doing my Erasmus in Santiago, I wanted to spend a few days in Buenos Aires. My father came from Belgium to see me in Santiago and then we went to Argentina. I will share my experience in the following article.

Where to sleep in Buenos Aires?

One should know that the City of Buenos Aires is divided in several districts. We decided to book our hostel in the district of Palermo, more exactly, Palermo Hollywood. I recommend you this district for several reasons. It is quite calm area during the day, so we would go to see the centre of city in a day time and then at night we would come back to Palermo to spend the night. In fact, this district is really calm at day but it transforms during the night. You can find here numerous bars and restaurants. It was really convenient to sleep there because we didn't have to take a cab to go home, we could walk our way home, which prevented us from spending money unnecessarily.

I would also recommend to you guys our hotel: the Dazzler Palermo, it has a swimming pool and the breakfast is included in the price. It has a large choices of products such as fruit, yogurt, cereals, croissants, bread... It was a quite luxurious hotel for a reasonable price (around 90€ per night for a room with two twin-beds).

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Where to eat in Buenos Aires?

As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the district of Palermo is full of restaurants of all types. If you are taking a walk in its little streets, you will find one to enjoy with no doubts at all. If you are a meat lover, Argentina is the perfect place to eat the best meat of your life. I had friends who had travelled to Argentina and used to tell me to go to the Ormiga. It is my turn now to recommend you to go there. I had the best steak of my life! Their meat was literally melting in my mouth. I cannot imagine what would have been the price for such a good meat in Belgium. There were two of us (me and my dad), and both of us ordered a coke, a steak, french fries and a salad, and also a bottle of red wine to share. For all this, we paid only 30 euros... So let me tell you that it was totally worth it.

Always have cash.

We went to Buenos Aires with our credits cards and we had only a little money in cash. That was a big problem. In Buenos Aires, there are a lot of restaurants and stores that don't have the electronic payment terminal, so we had to pay in cash which is quite surprising for a big city. One day we were finishing eating at a restaurant and we realized at the end of our meal that we had no way to pay.

It happened at l'Hormiga... So then I went looking for a cash machine nearby. After ten minutes I finally found one. Then, what a surprise! It was empty! So I started looking again, found another one, it was empty too. So finally, I had no other options, I had to go to another restaurant in order to ask if I could pay with my credit card so they can give me the change in cash. After asking in a few restaurants, the last one agreed... It took me one hour to pay for our meal. Moral of the story: you should always have cash in your pocket before visiting the town of Buenos Aires.

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The weather in Buenos Aires!

We came in January, it was pretty hot. However, the heat wasn't unbearable, we stayed for four days and we had only one day when the sky was very grey and with little rain at the end of the day...

How to visit Buenos Aires?

We decided to take city buses. Big mistake! In fact, after we bought our 2 day free-pass we thought we made a good deal as it was very cheap. However, there is only one company and it is really bad. There are only a few buses. We were afraid to step out of the bus because we knew we would have to wait more than an hour to get the next one. Plus, when we were finally happy to see one of our buses, it was full.

So it was quite impossible to jump in. We lost a lot of time waiting for these buses. Moreover, I think one benefit of theses buses is the information we get thanks to earphones. Nevertheless, in any case, the earphones were not working, so I practically didn't get any information. This experience was pretty disappointing. I would not recommend it. For those like us who are staying for a few days only I would recommend you to do it on foot, even if this means to take a cab at a certain point or a city bus. You have plenty of times to discover the town without loosing your time on these famous buses.

What to visit in Buenos Aires?

I will be honest. I was dreaming about visiting this town since ever and I have to admit that I got a little bit disappointed. From my point of view, there is not so much to visit and we quickly went around the city. I had trouble choosing my Erasmus destination as I was hesitating between Buenos Aires and Santiago, but I am glad I chose Santiago. During our fourth day in Buenos Aires we were getting a little bored, not knowing what to do next. For arts and museum lovers I think there are some that are pretty worth visiting. Unfortunately, I am not really into it so I did not visit any museum. I will tell you in the next paragraph what we saw and what I recommend you to see.

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The district of Palermo

As I have mentioned before, this district is definitely to be seen if you are visiting Buenos Aires. I recommend you to go there at night to see what the atmosphere feels like. You can start with the Plaza Serrano, which is a little round place where lots of bars and restaurants are located. Once you've walked these streets you will discover tons of beautiful places where you will be able to eat all types of food and party until the end of the night.

Distrito Arcos

Distrito Arcos is a brand new mall, also located in the district of Palermo. We went there to take a look. I would say I would not recommend it because there are just a few stores and they are really expensive. It is however a really nice mall that has a beautiful architecture and is at open air. (see pictures below)

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The city centre is represented by its obelisk, which is the symbol of the town. I really liked this part of the city because the architecture is really beautiful. The city has a large avenue on which the famous obelisk is. There are also a lot of beautiful buildings. However, this part of the city is to be visited at day time because at night it is really quiet.

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