Buenos Aires, by Bus & Bike

These days, whenever I’m in Buenos Aires, I prefer to get around on foot—while it’s more time-consuming than the Subte, city buses or taxis (all of which I use on occasion), walking offers the opportunity to view the city at a slower pace and also provides some exercise that can be otherwise hard to find on the unrelentingly flat terrain. During my recently stay, I walked as much as 11 miles (about 17 km) per day, though most of the time I did half that or a bit less. At some point soon, I’m planning to write about Buenos Aires specifically as a walker’s city—both the good and the bad.

Outside Buenos Aires Bus offices, on Diagonal Norte

I rarely take tours but, shortly before leaving Argentina earlier this month, I chose to see the city through two services I’d not known personally—Buenos Aires Bus and Biking Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires Bus is a hop-on/hop-off tourist shuttle that runs two separate routes around the city, between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. (though the northerly recorrido verde operates only between 10 a.m. and 6:50 p.m. Frequencies are 20 minutes on the central and southerly recorrido azul/rojo and 30 minutes on the verde.

The Buenos Aires Bus stop on Avenida Libertador in Palermo, two blocks from my apartment

While the company has its offices downtown, a short walk from the central Plaza de Mayo, it has convenient stops throughout the most visited parts of the city, and it’s possible to purchase tickets online and board near your accommodations. In my case, there’s a stop just a couple blocks from my Palermo Botánico apartment, where I boarded for the ride downtown.

Aboard a roofless Buenos Aires Bus

The buses themselves are double-deckers, sometimes open to the sun and sometimes shaded by a tarp; the lower deck is available when it rains. There are trilingual guides on board—Spanish, English and Portuguese—but there are also audio guides in seven other languages, including German, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew and Arabic. Every passenger receives a pair of headphones to hear the narration.

The iconic Obelisco, from the upper deck of Buenos Aires Bus

Sitting in the upper deck, I got a view of the city that was rather different from that of a pedestrian and I only regret that, as the end of my stay approached, I was not able to take full advantage of the service. For a first-time visitor to the city, though, it’s an option worth consideration, available either for 24 hours at Ar$670 (about US$34) or 48 hours at Ar$850 (about US$43) per person.

Biking Buenos Aires

On another day, though, I was able to indulge myself on a bicycle tour through parts of the city I’ve long known. Based in San Telmo, Biking Buenos Aires offers a variety of excursions, ranging from a five-hour “Heart of the City Tour” to a seven-hour “Ultimate City Tour” and thematic tours on architecture, urban art (including graffiti) and even a combined bike and kayak trip to the northern suburbs.

The Biking Buenos Aires offices in San Telmo

In the last week of my stay, I chose the “Heart of the City” option, which started around 11 a.m. with an orientation meeting, at Biking’s offices, for the eight of us (all Americans except for an English-speaking French couple). Our guides were Cristina Marey, a Galician woman who headed the group, and Olaf Menger, a Dutchman who brought up the rear and directed traffic at intersections where notoriously aggressive porteño drivers might plow into us.

At Parque Lezama, with the Russian Orthodox Church in the background, at right

Our first stop was Parque Lezama, only a few minutes from Biking’s offices, where Cristina spoke about the city’s supposed founding here by Pedro de Mendoza in 1536, and pointed out local landmarks such as the Iglesia Ortodoxa Rusa. We then rode on to La Boca for a stop at the traditional Caminito, where I was a reluctant recruit for a tango lesson with Olaf—I have two left feet and no sense of rhythm (at tango’s beginning, men danced with each other in brothels while waiting for a prostitute).

The Caminito is an obligatory stop in La Boca.

Until April, Ai Weiwei's "Forever Bicycles" will occupy the sidewalk outside the Fundación Proa.

The lesson was mercifully brief, followed by a short walk around the Caminito, where I saw two interesting novelties: first, at the Fundación Proa, a bicycle-oriented art installation by Ai Weiwei (here until early April), and then a fresh-squeezed orange-juice cart. Increasing in numbers, the orange juice carts are a welcome phenomenon in the city’s summer heat, are increasing in numbers.

Fresh-squeezed orange juice carts are an increasingly common sight on the city's streets.

Local boy Carlos Tévez is a hero in La Boca.

I heard, in the orientation, that we would see murals in La Boca, but I anticipated the historic paintings on the walls of La Bombonera, Boca Juniors’ iconic soccer stadium. Instead, we proceeded to a part of the barrio I didn’t know, where newly painted murals, such as this one of barrio hero Carlos Tévez—who recently re-signed with his original team—cover the sides of high-rise apartments. La Bombonera is visible in the distance, but in the other direction.

Puerto Madero's Reserva Ecológica is a reclaimed landfill.

Also atop the reclaimed landfill are luxury apartment buildings.

From La Boca, we rode toward the shores of the Río de la Plata and the Reserva Ecológica Costanera Sur, where grasses, shrubs, woodlands and birds have colonized a landfill that was once off-limits. It’s part of the city’s newest barrio, Puerto Madero, which is also the wealthiest but, not so far in the future, its luxury high-rises might require canoe or kayak access as rising seas also raise the river’s level in an already flood-prone zone.

Biking's clients lunch at Puerto Madero, with the Reserva Ecológica in the background.

Emerging from the woods, we lunched at a sandwich stand before continuing to the classic diques (basins) of the old port, now surrounded by the city’s priciest real estate, and the landmark Puente de la Mujer pedestrian bridge. Cristina commented that Puerto Madero is unaffordable for all but the wealthiest porteños, and that’s certainly true, but as Andrew Graham-Yooll once remarked to me, its ample public spaces—not limited to the Reserva Ecológica—are open to visitors of all social classes.

Spanish architect Antonio Calatrava's Puente de la Mujer has become an icon of Puerto Madero.

Puerto Madero's public areas are open to all, for activities like pickup soccer games.

Leaving Puerto Madero, we had our only uphill segment—a short one, but still a bit of an effort on a relatively heavy bike—before reaching the central Plaza de Mayo and its landmark buildings. Unfortunately, the Plaza itself is undergoing a major remodel (at the height of tourist season!), so we soon looped back to Biking’s offices and the conclusion of a satisfying 17-km two-wheel trip.

Shortly after I took this photo, from the balcony of the colonial Cabildo, the Plaza de Mayo closed for a major remodel.

Inside the Buenos Aires Bureaucracy

Last month, I posted a photograph on my Facebook page of homeless people sleeping in the alcove behind the Ministerio de Economía (Economy Ministry) in downtown Buenos Aires. I regret having to admit that I misidentified the building in question, as this alcove on the block of Moreno Street between Defensa and Balcarce is really part of the Administration Federal de Ingresos Públicos (AFIP, pictured below), Argentina’s counterpart to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

In fact, I was not completely wrong, as AFIP operates under the economy ministry, whose headquarters is one block east, across Balcarce. And I still won’t retract my criticism of the government’s economic hypocrisy - it has not made nearly the progress it claims in reducing poverty, and large numbers of individuals and families still survive outside any social safety net.

I’ve passed the Economía building countless times. It’s been the site of many historic events, most notably when military opponents of President Juan Domingo Perón (himself a general) bombarded the Plaza de Mayo in mid-1955; shrapnel marks remain on the building’s granite exterior (pictured above). I never considered, though, that I might some day take a tour of this bureaucratic monolith until last Tuesday, when my nephew Juan – who works there – invited his father Carlos, my wife María Laura (Carlos’s sister) and me to have lunch on the building’s 12th floor terrace.

The cafeteria food, apparently, is nothing to write home about, so we went to the nearby vegan café Vita, to get some takeaway. I wasn’t particularly hungry, so I only ordered a fresh-squeezed orange juice before we returned and, after passing through security, took the elevator to the 11th floor and walked the stairs to the 12th. En route, I photographed the poster below of one of Economy Minister Axel Kicillof’s proudest achievements: the “Precios Cuidados” program that relies on government intervention to subdue inflation on certain supermarket products . This "Price Watch" program has resulted in shortages of the products in question, though blaming the shortages on high demand sounds disingenuous.

On the inside, the building is unimpressive, but views from the terrace are interesting if not necessarily impressive – Buenos Aires has an unprepossessing skyline, though there are many individual buildings of architectural interest, especially the domes and mansards of early 20th-century buildings on and around the Plaza de Mayo.

From this vantage point, one particularly unimpressive structure is the Casa Rosada executive mansion (pictured below), which looks far less distinguished than it does from the Plaza itself.

Bargain Bites in Buenos Aires?

Just a few days ago, I wrote about Latin America’s “Top 50” restaurants, as much from curiosity as commitment - I don’t take such surveys too literally, and I found it amusing to think that I had eaten at so many of the region’s “best.” Though I’ve enjoyed all of them, to greater or lesser degrees, they’re not places at which I can afford to eat with any frequency.

This came to the fore when I received an email from a Buenos Aires friend, who is also a chef and a food writer, who offered some useful observations and corrections. I will preserve his anonymity here, but he has also eaten at most if not all the places in the list, at least those in the Argentine capital, and points out several shortcomings in the survey, not the least of which is that it's a corporate-sponsored list by Pellegrino water, which chooses the voters with no clear criteria to evaluate their expertise: "Each of those...submitted a list of their favorites…but there's no vetting to see if they've been there or not, it's just simply a tally of their votes, honor system...Chefs tend to vote for their friends/acquaintances, the public voters have a tendency to vote for the restaurants where either they happen to have been and had a good time, with no comparison against the other places, or, the places they think they're supposed to vote for because they've got the best press."

As far as corrections, my friend informs me that Astrid y Gastón, whose Buenos Aires branch near my apartment had recently closed, reopened a few weeks ago in a different Palermo location, and there’s news that Gastón Acurio will also open a branch of La Mar in the city. He also tells me that Oviedo, the traditional Spanish restaurant where I have not eaten for several years now, has undergone a major transformation to a more sophisticated international cuisine without, apparently, totally abandoning its roots.

The real downside of such lists, though, is that they imply you need to spend tons of money to eat well in Buenos Aires (or elsewhere). Here, by contrast, I provide a selective list of BA bargains that are either cheap, at the very least, provide excellent value for money. Following the name is the barrio to which it belongs.

1. Status, Monserrat: In the Congreso district, just two blocks from Argentina’s notoriously dysfunctional legislature, Status is a fine no-frills Peruvian restaurant that, in a time of raging inflation, has kept prices modest for classics such as ají de gallina (pictured above).

2. Pizzería Güerrin, Microcentro (San Nicolás): In the heart of the city’s theater district, Güerrín is the place to try a slice or so of fugazzeta, the savory onion and cheese pizza that’s a Buenos Aires special.

3. Laurak Bat, Monserrat: Dating from 1927, this unfashionable Basque restaurant (within the community's cultural center, pictured above) serves traditional fish dishes at moderate prices, such as that pictured below.

4. Bar El Federal, San Telmo: Dating from 1864, El Federal’s timeless interior (pictured below) deserves a visit for its ravioli specialty and, on a hot day, its refreshing hard cider on tap.

5. Tancat, Retiro: At midday, businessmen sit elbow-to-elbow at the bar of this Spanish tasca (pictured below), which has only a handful of tables. Moderately priced lunches and, unusual in Buenos Aires, a good selection of wines by the glass.

6. Club Danés, Retiro: Open for lunch only, this Scandinavian outpost offers inexpensive open-faced smørrebrød and other Nordic items, along with tenth-floor panoramas of Puerto Madero.

7. Grappa Cantina, Palermo: By Palermo Hollywood standards, this is an affordable contemporary take on the traditional bodegón that fed comfort food like beef, pasta and pizza to the city’s working class for many decades.

8. Bella Italia Café Bar, Palermo: Pictured above, a block from my Botánico apartment, this is my default choice for a light lunch at a moderate price. The ravioli and the spinach gnocchi (pictured below) are to die for, and the desserts excellent.

9. La Salamandra, Palermo: More than once, I’ve proclaimed my dislike for the sickly sweet caramel dessert that Argentines devour but, when in Palermo Soho, I overlook the specialty at this self-proclaimed dulce de leche bar (pictured below) for its sandwiches (usually on focaccia), salads and fresh juices.

10. Cadore, Microcentro: Leave some room for dessert at what, in my opinion, is the capital's best ice cream, and that's saying a lot. I've been going here for more than three decades, and still devour the chocolate amargo (bittersweet chocolate) and mousse de limón (lemon mousse). Fortunately for my diet, I no longer live within easy walking distance of this great temptation but, when I'm downtown, I often make a detour. The photo below dates from 1985 and, though it's since modernized, it's been in the same location since 1957 (note the outline map of Italy which, sadly, no longer graces the storefront).