Buenos Aires Alone: Tango, Steak, and Very Late Dinners

Buenos Aires operates on a schedule that takes a day or two to adjust to: dinner rarely starts before 9pm, and the city's milongas, social tango dance halls, often don't get going until well past midnight. Once you're on Buenos Aires time, the city opens up considerably.

Palermo and Recoleta are the two most common solo bases. Palermo, split into Palermo Soho and Palermo Hollywood, has a European, tree-lined feel with the city's best concentration of restaurants and bars. Recoleta is quieter and more upscale, home to the famous cemetery where Eva Perón is buried, worth visiting even if cemeteries aren't usually your thing.

A tango show is touristy by definition, but worth doing once, ideally at a milonga where locals actually dance rather than a dinner-theater version built entirely for visitors. La Catedral in Almagro is a well-regarded spot to watch, and sometimes take a beginner lesson, without the full tourist production.

The steak culture here is not an exaggeration. A proper parrilla (steakhouse) meal, often a cut you've never seen priced this reasonably, runs considerably less than equivalent quality elsewhere, Argentina's beef is both excellent and comparatively cheap by international standards.

San Telmo's Sunday market is worth building a morning around: antiques, street performers, and an atmosphere that spills out of the market itself into tango dancing on the street corners nearby.

Buenos Aires feels more European than most of South America, wide boulevards, grand old buildings, a strong cafe culture, which makes it an easier adjustment for first-time solo travelers to the continent while still being unmistakably, energetically Argentine.