As our year abroad enters its final third, time feels like it’s going by faster with the end of our travels in sight. For South America we tried to counteract this by slowing things down with fewer, longer stays, but it ironically had the opposite effect. The more “normal” the days felt the more they blended in to one another, making the past weeks fly by. Additionally we had our first true feelings of home sickness, tiring of the constant packing/unpacking and adapting to new spaces. On the flip side, we booked our flight back to the USA and are sad to see this wonderful year come to an end. Please do read on, I promise the rest of the post isn’t all doom & gloom!
Where Are We?
For our South American long stay we chose the city of Buenos Aires in Argentina. While Madeline and I don’t consider ourselves to be the city type, our long term traveling gives us a chance to dip our toe into that lifestyle for a few weeks. We elected for an apartment in the Palermo District, a common tourist area with, wait for it, good food and multiple plazas with playgrounds. Additionally, the quick access to major bus routes made it a great hub to explore the broader city from.
Coming from the Uruguayan countryside with free roaming children in the backyard to the tall buildings of the city was a shock. Space is a premium, and our two-bedroom apartment was adequate but had us each needing a little personal space by the end of it. Leaving the indoors was now a curated event, ensuring we had proper gear packed to limit our trips up and down tiny stairs and cramped elevators. Mae and Emmett also had to adapt to crowded streets with ludicrous bus drivers and how to “go around” the ever present dog poop on the sidewalks. But enough with the bleak dystopian realities of living in any major city on Earth and on to what made us fall in love with Buenos Aires.
Rather than large supermarkets or all-in-one stores (aka Target), the city is filled with small, specialized shops. Going to get groceries involved a trip to the individual produce, cheese and natural good stores. We initially found this annoying, but after familiarizing ourselves with our local favorites we enjoyed doing more frequent stops for a single red pepper or for exactly 10g of onion powder for a particular recipe versus a long, dedicated trip to the supermarket. The bakeries and the “Dieteticas”, health food/spice stores, were our favorites to frequent.
Buenos Aires also had fantastic green spaces with plazas, huge parks and something called an “Eco-Parque” which is an old zoo that is still kind of a zoo but not really? Like, there are free roaming mara, peacocks and other animals but also giraffes, and hippos still in cages. You have to see it to understand it. The plazas are a little more conventional and all sported fantastic play areas for kids. What was really cool is each of these playgrounds had a unique theme such as “arctic”, “robots” and one all about literal otters.
The city is huge, with over 3 million residents, and while we definitely didn’t see everything, we did hit many of the highlights. Three things we would recommend were the Recoleta Cemetery, the San Telmo Sunday Market and the La Boca Neighborhood. I’ll explain the cemetery later, but the Telmo Market was the largest craft market I’ve ever been to, spanning over five city blocks. Word of advice, the old, cobble stone streets its held on are picturesque but a nightmare for strollers. We did see many cat based crafts and Madeline struggled to limit her intake, knowing we still had three months to haul whatever we bought with us.
La Boca is a heavily touristed neighborhood, known for its colorful houses (painted with leftover paint from the shipyards, regardless of color), being the birthplace of tango and a major soccer club hub with pictures of Argentinian football legend Lionel Messi on literally every street corner. There were plenty of kitschy souvenirs and overdone photo opportunities, but it is something you still need to “check off the list” if you visit. We liked the less crowded side streets, still brightly colored, and visiting the Colón Fábrica, where they had huge stage props and costumes from their world famous opera productions at the Teatro Colón. We concluded our trip to La Boca with a lunch and Tango show where Mae was transfixed by the dancers and I was transfixed with the overpriced menu.
Finally, no trip to South America would be complete without seeing a futbol (aka soccer) match. Futbol is life, and a cultural aspect we really wanted to show the kids. There were a few bumps getting there, but eventually the Devereauxs became temporary fans of Club Atlético Platenese. El Calamar, or “the squid” as the team was known, put on a show, scoring an early goal before having to settle for a 1-1 tie. In addition to the game on the pitch, we loved watching and listening to the fans sing and dance their battle hymns in the stands. We learned that this passion can run a little hot between rivals and as a result no alcohol is served at the games and a large police presence is common. Our experience, though, was calm and enjoyable and we loved blending in to the local fan base.
Favorite Things
Places
Here were some of our favorite activities from the trip! I put these on a map at the end of the blog along with our accommodations if you want links and more information.
- Ecoparque – An old zoo that has been half converted to a free range animal area but still maintains a few of the original animal enclosures for giraffes, hippos and pumas. It is completely free and was an attention grabbing place to explore with the kids. Emmett and Mae could have spent hours hear looking for turtles in the lake and watching the peacocks cross the trails. We actually went twice, the weekend was way more crowded than the week day.
- The Plazas on Weekend – From our accommodations in Palermo we were close to three plazas: Immigrantes de Armenia, Güemes and Unidad Latinoamericana. All three of these had playgrounds, homey coffee shops on the edge and often farmers and/or craft markets on the weekends. Our favorite was Immigrantes de Armenia, where we could take turns walking the market while the kids played on the playground or painted pictures on easels set up by a local entrepreneur for $1.
- Recoleta Cemetery – Ok, so this place gave me the creeps and yet the kids loved it. The cemetery is far more than tombstones, its mostly above/below ground crypts with coffins. Madeline found that she could take a photo of a tomb and ask AI to tell us an interesting story about the person buried there(like we were five).The kids took turns picking and for over an hour we learned about the dead of Buenos Aires.
- El Ateneo Grand Splendid – This bookstore has taken over an old theater space and offers something for every one. The kid section in the basement had both English and Spanish options and going to the top balconies to look over the store was a cool view.
Food
Buenos Aires is a gastronomic hot spot of South America, where food options range from street vendors to three star Michelin restaurants. We ate our weight in alfajores, a cookie sandwich of a dulce de leche, and went to several parrilla (grill) restaurants. Argentina is synonymous with empanadas but we found them to be hit and miss. Places that sold pre-cooked ones were decidedly “meh”, but places that made them fresh were excellent, especially the combo empanada/pizza places. Italian food continued to be excellent, with the best filled pastas we’ve ever had, both vegetarian and meat. Here were a few of places worth extra mentioning:
- Cooking Class – We started our stay in Buenos Aires with a cooking class at Vicky’s House. We walked in to mate and homemade alfajores, which the kids double fisted, and knew we were in for a treat. We learned how to make empanadas from scratch (Emmett and Mae got in on the folding actions) and a fantastic lentil soup, all with the core spices of paprika (it was sooo strong!), parsley, garlic and cumin. We ate our homemade lunch and drank wine out of el pingüino, a common penguin shaped wine decanter. We really wanted one but decided it would be too hard to take with us :(.
- Hi Coffee – I continue my hunt for good brews and Hi Coffee met that need. It was a great spot to do some catch up work on the computer while enjoying a flat white. The best part, though, was the lemon-pistachio alfajore, which was the perfect pairing for coffee.
- Obrador Florida – We showed up 15 minutes before the place opened and there was already a line. The ice cream is fancy, with rotating flavors that all sounded so good it was hard to choose just one. I’m a sucker for maracuja (passion fruit) so had that mixed with a custard flavor that was the perfect pairing.
- Artemisa – A recommendation from our cooking class, in the meat based culture of Argentina it’s always a gamble trying a vegetarian place. Artemisa exceeded our expectations and was the best meal we had in the city. Their eggplant milanese and squash stuffed ravioli were fantastic.
- Calden del Soho Grill – On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Calden is a parrilla with “all the meats”. Seasoned only with salt (the traditional way), I had the ojo de bife (ribeye) and the kids helped me eat chorizos, which are pork sausages but not the spicy Mexican kind you are thinking of. We All also loved the melty, provoleta cheese that they also cook over the open flame in a cast iron skillet.
It’d be remiss to forget to mention mate! We covered it extensively in our Uruguay post. Mate is also a way of life in Argentina, even Lionel Messi can be spotted enjoying it post-soccer games in Miami. As opposed to Uruguay, mate culture in Argentina felt a bit more organized, with everyone carrying special leather containers to take it to the park (rather than it being sipped on the go in Uruguay). For taste, it was milder here and it had larger pieces, making less mate dust to deal with. We enjoyed it immensely in both locations.
Family Moments
- Emmett’s Birthday– Emmett turned three during our stay in Buenos Aires! We let him pick his meals and activities for the day. We spent the morning at the Museo de los Niños Abasto, a pretend neighborhood for kids where the kids were excellent McDonalds employees, with Mae running the register and Emmett flipping burgers. For dinner we had Mac & Cheese w/ peas and finished with a chocolate and dulce de leche cake, complete with Lightning McQueen decorations.
- Planetarium – On a random day during Emmett’s nap, Madeline decided to make a last minute trip to the planetarium, which involved some running across muddy parks to make it for the show. When they arrived they realized that it was more of a Spanish story with pictures to follow. Madeline translated/recounted solar details for a fascinated Mae and the two ended up having a great time before meeting Emmett and I for playground and dinner.
- Per Mae (5.5 Yr Old): Favorite moment was “Playgrounds” – There were so many playgrounds scattered throughout the city that we hit up a new one nearly every day. They were actually “disappointed” (for all of five seconds) when we went back to one we had been to before.
- Per Emmett (3!!!! Yr Old): Favorite moment was “My Birthday” – No surprise here, Emmett’s favorite memory was his birthday. Each morning of the week leading up to the big event he would ask if “Is today my Birthday?”. I love the 3rd birthday because it’s the first time they can recognize what’s going on and he loved having a special day all about him.
Tips & Lessons Learned
This is where we put all of the things we learned along the way about traveling in the region with toddlers.
- The Buses/Subways – Public transportation around Buenos Aires is really good and the best part is all you need is a credit card to tap and pay. The Subways are straight forward, but the buses are bit more nuanced. When you get on you need to tell the driver the stop you are getting off at before tapping to pay. Oh, and hold on, because they start moving before the door is even closed. This applies to bus departure as well, where you need to hop off quickly. Be prepared with kids!
- Online Booking Sucks – Across airlines, event tickets and dinner reservations we had a really hard time booking anything online that you had to pay for. Foreign credit cards worked only 25% of the time and that’s assuming you even made it to the payment screen. We often had to resort to sending WhatsApp messages to places for reservations and pay on arrival.
- Cash – Cash is very prevalent but not necessary in most of Buenos Aires. It does usually get you a 10-15% discount on what you are buying, but exchanging for pesos is tricky. Exchange shops offer variable rates and invoke a 5-10% exchange rate penalty on any US bill smaller than $100 and on any $100 with a tear or smudge on it.
- Eating Out with Kids – Breakfast was hard to find outside of a coffee and pastry. We ate breakfast in and often got a pastry for a mid-morning snack at the playground. For dinner, it is late in Argentina, with places often opening at 8 pm! The same restaurants usually serve lunch and then close for siesta. Despite our efforts, our kids could not adjust to the Argentinian schedule. What worked well for us was eating breakfast in, lunch out and dinner in.
- Seeing a Soccer Match with Kids – There is a lot of Soccer in Buenos Aires and it’s overwhelming to decide where and what to see, especially with younger kids. Many games are late (post bedtime) and fans can get rowdy. I asked a few locals and also made a post on Reddit asking for advice and the common theme was to go to the smaller D1 matches or D2 matches during the daytime slots. Also most tickets available ahead of time are for club members only or blocked by Argentina’s terrible online non-citizen purchase systems. Most of the smaller matches will have tickets available at the stadium an hour or two before the game, for cash.
