After zipping around from place to place, it can be nice to slow down in one place to relax and recharge, as well as to get to know one particular place better than our cursory whirlwind travels generally allow.  Due to our recent disappointment in realizing that we wouldn’t be able to work in our Antarctic cruise as planned, we were left with an abundance of extra time, which we decided to take advantage of by staying in Buenos Aires for a full month.  In addition to the weekend trip already mentioned, staying in one place for so long gave us plenty of time to explore the city itself, replete with trendy bars, delicious food, and world-class museums.

Our apartment was located in the Palermo district, one of the more popular areas with the younger crowd.  You’ll find plenty of nightlife, most of which doesn’t get started until well after midnight, and too many mouth-watering food options to try in a year, let alone a month.  Most of the food options are high-quality spins on simple fare; burgers, pizza, and hot dogs piled high with fresh toppings are some common offerings, which is exactly the type of food you’re looking for after a few hours at the bars.  Qualifiers like ‘gourmet’, ‘gastro’, and ‘homemade’ are tossed around to justify the higher-than-average prices, and while too many meals out and about can certainly make your wallet cry, the food is undeniably delicious and worth the occasional splurge.  One of our favorite meals was had at the Burger Joint, which offers, as you might guess, craft hamburgers and hand-cut fries.  Our meal was doubly delicious because of the difficulty of finding a decent burger in most of South America up to that point.

In between meals, we checked out a few of the city’s more cultural attractions.  Among those are MALBA, an art museum that showcases works by Latin American artists; a large Japanese garden, one of the largest in the world outside of Japan, which has had many Japanese diplomats and royals as visitors; and the La Recoleta Cemetery, which is an amazing city-like cemetery filled with towering tombs and monuments to Argentine heroes, chief among them Eva Peron (Evita).

Even the building is artsy!

The Japanese Gardens, a beautiful spot to wander

La Recoleta Cemetery. It’s easy to get lost amongst the tombs.

It was definitely nice being in one place for a while again.  We could do regular grocery shopping, cook meals at home, and didn’t feel rushed to explore the city at any pace other than the one we wanted.  Towards the end, we were getting a bit antsy, so we probably won’t do a full month in other cities; we spent three weeks in Cali, which seems to be about the perfect amount of time.  Regardless, it was a great city to spend some time in, and we left rested and ready to get back out there!