One week in Buenos Aires: the perfect Buenos Aires itinerary for 7 days

Day 1 (Sunday): exploring historic San Telmo

If you’re staying in or near San Telmo, Sunday is the opportunity to experience the neighbourhood at its very best. It’s market day! A Sunday in San Telmo is a wonderful introduction to Buenos Aires if it’s your first day in the city.

Have breakfast at San Telmo Market

There are lots of great spots to try breakfast in San Telmo, but when you first arrive, Mercado de San Telmo is the perfect place to start. This thriving indoor market is at the very core of the neighbourhood and been the heartbeat of life here since the 19th century.

The iron-clad market building is a maze of different food stalls, with other shops and stalls lined around the perimeter. You might want to spend more time exploring here, and there will be plenty of time for that later as well.

San Telmo Market opens at 9am on Sundays, so head here early doors before it gets too busy. The timing works perfectly to head out into the flea market after breakfast.

Morning: browse the stalls at Feria de San Telmo

Feria de San Telmo is a huge weekly flea market that has become an institution in Buenos Aires. Every Sunday, you will see hundreds of stalls lined along the road Defensa, and spilling outwards from the market’s epicentre in Plaza Dorrego.

The market is primarily an antiques fair, but you will find all sorts of goodies being traded on the stalls, from craft to clothing. Look out for traditional mate cups as well. Tango dancers and street musicians perform along the sidelines, while street food sizzles away on the narrow lanes shooting off from the main thoroughfare. If you didn’t get your fill at breakfast, you can top up with a choripan or sweet alfajor.

The market officially opens at 10am, but you will see shops opening their shutters and stalls getting going from about 9:30am. Come early if you want to experience the feria when it’s a little quieter.

Keep an eye on your valuables while you are browsing, as the market can be a hotspot for pickpocketing and petty distraction theft.

Explore the underground labyrinth of El Zanjón de Granados

If you want to get away from the mayhem of Feria de San Telmo for a little while, you can escape quite literally underground at El Zanjón de Granados. This labyrinth of tunnels underneath San Telmo tells an important story of the neighbourhood’s history.

The mansion belonged to a wealthy family in the 19th century, who were one of the fortunate few to have a cistern for managing their household water. Above ground, the mansion has been restored to reflect its former grandeur, and below ground, you enter an archeological maze of tunnels and old waterways.

Have a late steak lunch at La Brigada

There are hundreds of places to eat steak in Buenos Aires, and this one won’t be the last we recommend in our Buenos Aires itinerary for 7 days. La Brigada is a good place to start though; it’s one of the most popular in San Telmo, with good reason.

Visiting La Brigada can be an experience in itself. Tables are in high demand, and if you don’t book, you need to arrive and join a waiting list – which is actually a lot of fun. We turned up in early afternoon when people on the waiting list were gathered in the downstairs area and spilling out onto the street outside with beers in hand.

The system feels chaotic, but it’s actually organised down to a tee. The floor manager stands at the bottom of the stairs and yells out the name of the next people on the list whenever a table comes up. It seems like there are a lot of people, but it’s a big restaurant, so the list whittles down quickly – we got a table in about an hour, and you can enjoy the ambience with a beer in the mean time.

We shared two delicious cuts of steak: bife do chorizo and bife especial. If you’re not sure what to order, you can ask for recommendations.

For a more old-school traditional steak restaurant in San Telmo, we also recommend trying El Desnivel, just outside the market building.

Afternoon: see more sights around San Telmo

There is much more to see and explore around San Telmo. Take the rest of your first day at a leisurely pace and have a wander around, perhaps stopping at a museum. These are some things to look out for around the neighbourhood:

• La Casa Minima: the narrowest house in Buenos Aires!
• Mafalda: take your photo with the famous cartoon character on the bench.
• MACBA: the Museum of Contemporary Art, well worth a visit.
• National Museum of History: with impressive artworks, extensive exhibitions of the revolution days, and stories of the city’s football heritage.

Have a slice of local pizza for a light evening bite

You might not associate Argentina with pizza. But amazingly, Buenos Aires has more pizzerias than any city in the world! Maybe you don’t need any more food after your late steak lunch, but if you get a bit peckish in the evening, grab a slice of pizza from Pirilo.

This hole-in-the-wall pizza joint is an absolute institution in the neighbourhood, and you will get a delicious slice for a very small price.

Head out to learn tango at a milonga night

If you want to learn some tango steps in Buenos Aires, the cheapest and most fun way to do it is by going to a milonga night. This is a traditional local gathering where people congregate in a big hall or tango club for some lessons, before dancing and partying late into the night.

So, if you’re not too tired from jet lag on your first full day, Sunday night is perfect for a milonga. This is one of the activities organised by Viajero Hostel, and that’s how we went – they took us to the milonga night at La Viruta Tango Club in Palermo.

If you’re not staying at the hostel, you can just grab a taxi or take the bus/metro to the tango club. The milonga lessons begin from about 8:30pm.

The milonga doesn’t have a formal atmosphere, it’s more of a casual social vibe. A bit like you are at your uncle’s wedding. You are soon made to feel at home, and the tango lessons are separated into beginners, intermediate and advanced sections of the hall. Wine flows from the beginning, it’s a lot of fun! And if you’re up for a late one you can stay dancing until 5am.

Day 2 (Monday): La Boca and La Bomba Del Tiempo

Monday is the day when you will experience the life and colour of the city to the fullest in our Buenos Aires one week itinerary. Welcome to the vibrant artistic neighbourhood of La Boca, and experience the energetic drum beats of La Bomba Del Tiempo. Let’s get into it.

Grab breakfast in San Telmo at Nica

Before the day’s activities begin, grab some breakfast in San Telmo at Nica. This is a gorgeous little café just outside the market building that has a very satisfying breakfast menu. The eggs benedicts are amazing here! Great wholesome fuel for the sightseeing to come.

Morning: take a tour of the colourful La Boca neighbourhood

La Boca is the most colourful part of Buenos Aires, a neighbourhood that grew and thrived after waves of immigration from Europe in the 19th century. The bright-coloured buildings of its central road, El Caminito, were designed by local legend Benito Quinquela Martín, and now form an open-air museum.

You can explore the neighbourhood’s history and highlights on a walking tour of La Boca. We took a tour organised by Viajero Hostel, but this walking tour is also great value for money and will show you the neighbourhood’s highlights in just a couple of hours.

Have a choripan street food lunch in La Boca

Food in La Boca often comes at a tourist premium, but you’ll find a gem of a street food joint at Paseo Del Valle, just off El Caminito. Choripan sausages are sizzling away on an open BBQ, and you can wash it down with an Argentine beer from the shop. The perfect lunch snack.

Afternoon: take the stadium tour of La Bombonera

La Boca is also the home of the legendary Boca Juniors football team. You can’t miss the giant blue and yellow stadium of La Bombonera, which seamlessly blends into the surroundings of the neighbourhood. Football is part of the lifeblood of Buenos Aires, and nowhere can you see it more clearly than here.

It’s a tricky and expensive business to get tickets for a match at La Bombonera, but if you just want to capture the flavour of the place then it’s well worth taking the stadium tour and visiting the museum. You can buy tickets on the club website or at the stadium on the day.

Dinner with a glass of red at La Poesía

When you are finished exploring La Boca, head back to San Telmo. You can walk or take the 29 bus. Head for some dinner and wine at La Poesía, a beautiful restaurant with a literary theme in a 19th-century corner building. Its name reflects its history as a meeting place for some of the city’s most famous poets.

See the legendary percussion show of La Bomba Del Tiempo

If you are in Buenos Aires on a Monday, you cannot miss the percussion show of La Bomba Del Tiempo. It’s a relentless display of energy, rhythm and musicianship that will take your breath away.

The show takes place at the Ciudad Cultural Konex performance venue. Your accommodation might organise transport there, but if not it’s still pretty easy to reach by taxi in about 15 minutes from San Telmo. Doors open at about 7pm. You might need to queue little while outside first – we grabbed an empanada from a street vendor while we were waiting.

Day 3 (Tuesday): sightseeing on the hop-on hop-off bus

With the city’s many landmarks spread out over many kilometres in different neighbourhoods, the Buenos Aires hop-on hop-off sightseeing bus is a great way to navigate the attractions.

We got a 24 hour ticket for the bus so we could stop off at the few places we hadn’t seen yet. You might want to consider buying a 48-hour ticket, which only costs a small amount extra. The next day in our itinerary is a free day for exploring, and so it will be useful to still have access to the bus.

Have empanadas for breakfast

You could begin the day by having a breakfast empanada in San Telmo. An empanada is a popular pastry snack in Argentina that comes with various fillings. Try one at Panadería y Confitería La Mariposa, a local bakery that opens at 7am and does some of the best empanadas in the city.

See the Pink House in Plaza de Mayo

After breakfast, take a ten-minute walk from the bakery up to Plaza de Mayo. This is the place where Buenos Aires was first formed, and it remains one of the city’s most important squares.

On the far side of the plaza you can’t miss Casa Rosada, the “Pink House”, which is the president’s executive mansion. Because of the building’s political significance, the square has witnessed some of the city’s most famous demonstrations and protests over the years.

Hop on the bus from Puerto Madero

After taking your time to explore around Plaza de Mayo, there are a couple of places nearby where you can hop on the sightseeing bus. The closest is Avenida Roque Sáenz Peña, but from there it heads down to San Telmo and La Boca, which you’ve already seen if you’ve been following this Buenos Aires itinerary.

Instead, take a short walk across to the waterside Puerto Madero neighbourhood where you can have a look around before hopping on the bus as it heads towards the city’s north-west.

Stop off at parks and museums

The sightseeing bus navigates many highlights of the city, and you won’t have time to stop and see them all. Our itinerary later in the week includes a day in Recoleta and Palermo, so we suggest focusing your bus stops on other places.

These are some highlights on the north-west part of the route where you could consider getting off to explore:

• Planetario Galileo Galilei, a huge planetarium in an iconic dome-shaped building. It’s also set within a green space of adjoining parks, gardens and waterways. A lovely place to see the more peaceful side of the city.
• Parque de la Memoria de Buenos Aires, a green space on the waterfront dedicated to the memory of victims from the days of military dictatorship. If you want to learn more about this, you could visit ESMA, which is a little way off the sightseeing bus route. We had a humbling experience visiting this museum on the grounds where many prisoners were detained and sent to their deaths. There are some other good museums on the same complex, including Museo Malvinas (the Falklands Museum).
• Estadio Monumental, the football stadium of River Plate, main rivals to Boca Juniors. You can visit the museum and take a stadium tour.

Have some street food in Chinatown

As the bus heads back towards Recoleta and Plaza de Mayo, you could make a stop-off for some food at Barrio Chino (Chinatown) while also seeing a different side of the city.

Chinatown is concentrated along a couple of main streets, lined with stores, market stalls and little restaurants with rows of colourful tables and chairs for outdoor dining. Grab some Chinese street food and sit outside in the sunshine if it’s a nice day.

See the tango show at El Querandi with dinner

You must see a tango show while you are in Buenos Aires if you want to experience the full force of the city’s flamboyant culture. Tango is Argentina’s favourite dancing tradition, and it was born right here in Buenos Aires.

The tango show at El Querandi is a fantastic introduction to the tradition, telling the story of 150 years of tango in a one-hour performance. It’s a real tour de force of the genre! We went for a full evening of tango with a three-course dinner and loved every minute of it.

Day 4 (Wednesday): free day, with evening asado experience

Our itinerary for one week in Buenos Aires includes a free day so you can relax or do some of your own exploring.

We suggest paying a visit to Café Tortoni, the oldest coffeehouse in Buenos Aires. This Parisienne-style café has been running for more than 150 years, and was a popular meeting place for famous writers, artists and tango stars. You may need to queue to get in, as it’s very popular.

Have the 9-course BBQ tasting experience at Fogón Asado

The asado is one of our favourite food traditions we have encountered anywhere in the world. If you want to truly experience Argentine hospitality, then an asado night is an absolute must. This wonderful social gathering involves sharing good times and conversation over a selection of meats slow-cooked over a BBQ.

In Buenos Aires, you can have a full-on introduction to the tradition with the 9-course BBQ tasting experience at Fogón Asado in Palermo. We had an incredible night there and some of the best food we’ve ever tasted on our travels in Argentina.

Find out more in our full review of a night at Fogón Asado.

Go for cocktails at Rey de Copas

When you’ve finished your asado meal, you might want to head back to your accommodation and rest after all that meat. But if you’re up for a nightcap, head around the corner to Rey de Copas, a beautiful cocktail bar set in a refurbished old 19th-century casa chorizo.

Day 5 (Thursday): boat tour of the Tigre Delta

Spending one week in Buenos Aires gives the opportunity to take a day trip outside of the city. You might not know that an Amazonian-esque subtropical habitat is just short boat ride away at the Tigre Delta.

We suggest a Tigre Delta boat tour that lasts until mid-afternoon, so there’s still some time to either relax or try another activity back in the city. We took this tour ourselves and felt it was just the right length for a fulfilling day trip.

Have breakfast at Punto Café

The Tigre Delta boat tour begins at Puerto Madero, which is about a half-hour walk from San Telmo. Before setting off to the meeting point, you could grab a tasty breakfast in San Telmo at Punto Café, which does some delicious traditional pastries and toasties.

Take the day trip to the Tigre Delta

The Tigre Delta boat tour lasts about six hours in total. It begins with a fabulous scenic boat ride along the Rio Plata, with sweeping views of the city skyline, before entering the world’s third largest river delta.

You will also spend some time in the suburb town of Tigre to visit its local markets and have an empanada lunch. Read our full review of the Tigre Delta boat tour for more details.

Try a wine tasting experience in San Telmo

You probably already know that wine is a big thing in Argentina. Most of the country’s wine is produced in Mendoza, but the capital Buenos Aires has a thriving wine culture as well, with dozens upon dozens of wine shops, bars and bodegas.

This introduction to Buenos Aires wine culture in San Telmo has a session starting at 5pm, which should work out perfectly after you get back from the Tigre Delta boat tour. You will try a variety of Argentine wines with food pairings in a local winery.

Have incredible burgers at El Banco Rojo

El Banco Rojo in San Telmo is probably the best burger bar I’ve ever been to. If you love burgers, you must make a stop here while you’re in the city.

The portions are huge, the meat is juicy and flavoursome, the prices are unbelievably cheap, you’ll get mountains of handmade chips, and there is a fantastic selection of craft beers as well.

Evening: go to a football match!

Football is like a religion in Argentina, and you can witness the passion at its most intense by going to a live match. This is one of the best things to do in Buenos Aires to get fully immersed in the city’s sporting culture.

There are often matches on a Thursday night in the Argentine league, so we’ve included it on this day in our Buenos Aires itinerary, but you may need to be flexible according to the fixture schedules.

Boca Juniors and River Plate are the city’s two most biggest and most famous clubs, but tickets are expensive. As an alternative, we went to see Racing Club, another major historic football club on the south side of the city. We bought tickets at the stadium on the night, but you can also get them in the club shops beforehand.

Day 6 (Friday): exploring Recoleta and Palermo

On the final full day of our itinerary for one week in Buenos Aires we suggest exploring the two beautiful neighbourhoods of Recoleta and Palermo, which lie towards the north-west side of the city.

If you don’t mind a long stroll, you could walk to Recoleta from San Telmo within an hour, catching some sights along the way like Teatro Colón and the Obelisk. But there are other chances to see these within our itinerary, and so it’s probably easier to hop on a bus up Avenida 9 de Julio.

Have a sweet breakfast and coffee at Öss Kaffe, Recoleta

One of the team at Viajero Hostel, Dante, who was our guide on some tours, recommended to us that we would find the best coffee in Buenos Aires at a place called Öss Kaffe. He wasn’t wrong! There are a couple of these in the city, one of which is a cosy little café in Recoleta.

It’s not unusual to have cake for breakfast in Argentina, and Öss Kaffe does some amazing sweet treats. We had a cookie and brownie cake that were out of this world, to go with our perfectly brewed espressos. There are some fun flavoured versions to try – we had one with gin and honey (highly recommended!) and another with orange juice.

See the world’s most beautiful book store (in an old theatre)

Buenos Aires has some of the very best book stores in the world. Most beautiful of all is El Ateneo Grand Splendid, a library and book store inside a repurposed century-old theatre. It’s an absolute must to see while you’re in Recoleta, and it’s conveniently only about five minutes’ walk away from Öss Kaffe.

Find Evita’s grave in La Recoleta Cemetery

La Recoleta Cemetery is probably Recoleta’s most famous landmark. The neighbourhood is where much of the city’s old wealth was focused, which you can see in its magnificent old palaces, and also in this resting place of the rich and famous.

Many notable politicians, members of high society and popular culture stars are interred in decadent shrines inside this cemetery. It’s a dark maze of the city’s lavish history, and you can even take a guided tour of La Recoleta Cemetery.

The most famous resident of the cemetery is Eva Perón, better known as Evita, who is buried in the crypt of the Duarte family. See if you can find her along the cemetery’s narrow walkways.

If there is still time left in the morning, after visiting the cemetery you could take a short walk to Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and see its awe-inspiring collection of artworks.

Have lunch outdoors at Distrito Arcos, Palermo

When it gets towards early afternoon, it’s time to take a bus or taxi over to Palermo to explore Buenos Aires’ trendiest neighbourhood.

You’ll probably be hungry, and so a good place to start is Distrito Arcos, a hip outdoor mall with a scattering of food trucks and outlet stalls. If, like us, you’ll be eating lots of steak during your week in Buenos Aires, Distrito Arcos is great for grabbing something a bit lighter and healthier. We had delicious smoothie bowls from the Mahalo stall.

Afternoon: take a graffiti and street art tour of Palermo

Palermo’s streets are daubed with many colourful murals and interesting graffiti. We learned about the local street art culture in more depth on a Palermo graffiti and street art tour, which is superb value for money.

Starting at 3pm, the tour fits neatly into today’s itinerary and will take you on a journey through Palermo’s mesmerising street art. Our guide was Vito, a local student who was full of knowledge about the stories behind each piece of art, and he also gave us some great local food and drink recommendations.

Get to know Palermo’s craft beer scene

The Palermo neighbourhood is the craft beer capital of Buenos Aires, and early evening is the perfect time to hit a couple of bars. Choppería, on the lively crossroads of Gurruchaga and El Salvador, is the ideal place to start. Other great craft beer bars to hit up include 1516 Cerveceria, Baum and Desarmadero.

There’s a good couple of hours to kill before our suggested spot for dinner nearby, so take your time and enjoy some great local beer!

Have amazing stake for dinner at La Carnicería

For your last evening meal in the city, why not treat yourself to possibly the best steak in Buenos Aires? We have eaten at countless steakhouses in the city and we still haven’t tried one better than La Carnicería.

This is a small, intimate parrilla, with only eight tables, and seatings at only 7pm, 8:45pm or 10:45pm. For this itinerary we suggest booking in for 7pm (booking in advance is essential), and then you can hit the bars again afterwards if you want to party on your last night.

La Carniceria is not the cheapest, but the quality is incredible, and worth the stretch to end your trip in style. We tried the smoked cut and the parrilla cut, which came in gigantic portions and absolutely blew us away. Wow.

Day 7 (Saturday): relax and shop for souvenirs

The final day of our itinerary for one week in Buenos Aires is for shopping! If there are no more activities you want to tick off your list, then you can use your last few hours before leaving the city to pick up some souvenirs to take away.

If you want to buy some Argentine wine to take home, head to La Uvateca in San Telmo. This fabulous little wine store has a great selection at very reasonable prices, and the staff are happy to give recommendations. We bought a couple of bottles of Angelica Zapata Malbec here, which we had tried at Fogón Asado.

For travellers with a sweet tooth, you must take home some alfajores from Buenos Aires. These delicious cake-biscuits filled with dulce de leche are one of our favourite treats from South America. We tried them from several different specialist shops – look out for La Vaca Lechera and La Casa del Dulce de Leche, which are both great.

If you enjoyed El Ateneo Grand Splendid, then you might want to explore some more of the city’s beautiful book stores. Walrus Books in San Telmo is a charming little shop that has titles in both English and Spanish.

For some more heavy-duty shopping, head up to Calle Florida in the Microcentro district, about a half-hour walk from San Telmo. This was the city’s first pedestrianised street and is the epicentre for high street shopping today. If you do head here, you could have one final amazing steak for lunch at Santos Manjares. The bife de chorizo steak here is incredible.