Buenos Aires: South America's Most European City, Right on the River

La Boca, immediately south of the cruise terminal, is the neighborhood of brightly painted corrugated-iron houses and the Caminito pedestrian alley that appears in every photograph of Buenos Aires. The neighborhood grew up as the home of Genoese immigrants who worked the nearby meatpacking plants, and the tradition of painting houses in leftover ship paint from the nearby port explains the mismatched colors. The Caminito is tourist-facing and staged; the streets immediately west of it, around the Boca Juniors stadium, give a more unvarnished picture of what is still a working-class neighborhood. Go in daylight.

San Telmo, the neighborhood immediately north of La Boca, is the city's oldest surviving barrio, full of colonial-era buildings converted to antique shops, tango bars, and weekend markets. The Plaza Dorrego fair on Sunday is the most notable; leather goods, silver mate cups, and vintage tango memorabilia turn up reliably. The Sunday milonga at Club Gricel, nearby, is genuine rather than performative.

The Recoleta Cemetery, forty minutes northwest of the port, is one of the more extraordinary urban spaces in South America — a city of marble mausoleums and stacked family vaults in a neighborhood of French Beaux-Arts apartment buildings. Evita Perón is buried here, in the Duarte family vault (follow the signs; it draws a crowd). The cemetery is free to enter and navigating it without a map is part of the pleasure.

The MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires) in Palermo is among the best modern art museums on the continent. The permanent collection emphasizes twentieth-century Latin American work — Rivera, Kahlo, Xul Solar, Antonio Berni — and is well-lit and well-curated. Palermo itself is the most pleasant neighborhood in the city for walking: jacaranda-lined streets, independent restaurants, and the rose garden in the city's Japanese Garden.

A note on logistics: Buenos Aires taxis have a good reputation and metered fares are reasonable. Uber also operates here. The city center is walkable from the nearest Metro stops but a twenty-minute taxi from Puerto Madero to Recoleta is the practical baseline for port-day navigation.