In short
Buenos Aires is a European city in South America: its avenues, cafés and architecture come from the massive Italian and Spanish immigration of the turn of the twentieth century. The Spanish spoken here is distinctive, rioplatense, with its vos and its Italianate accent.
Palermo, the largest district, divides into Soho and Hollywood: bars, restaurants, shops. San Telmo is the old quarter, with its Sunday fair. Recoleta is bourgeois and holds the cemetery. La Boca keeps the coloured sheet-metal houses of Caminito.
Arriving and getting around
Two airports: Ezeiza, international, some thirty kilometres out, and Aeroparque, in the city, for domestic and regional flights. Transferring between them takes time.
The Subte, the metro, and the colectivos, very numerous buses, require a SUBE card, bought at a kiosk. Cash is useful: not everything takes cards.
What it really costs
Currency exchange in Argentina is a moving subject. The country has had multiple rates and high inflation, and the rules have changed several times recently. Check the situation in force just before departure with an up-to-date financial source: any figure given here would age in weeks.
For the rest, Buenos Aires remains affordable for a foreign visitor, eating out included.
When to come
March–May and September–November. The southern summer (December–February) is hot, humid, and the city empties towards the coast. Winter is mild.
What nobody tells you
Recoleta cemetery is a city of mausoleums where the country's ruling families lie, Eva Perón among them. It is visited like a neighbourhood, and the alleys are laid out like streets.
La Boca is visited over a few streets only. Caminito is marked and busy; beyond it the district is not touristic and local advice is not to wander on foot.
El Ateneo Grand Splendid, a bookshop set in a 1919 theatre with its boxes and curtain preserved, is regularly named among the finest in the world. Entry is free.
The milonga is the ordinary tango dance, attended by locals, and has nothing to do with the dinner shows sold to visitors.
Dinner starts late — rarely before nine in the evening, often later.