Welcome to the most appealing city in all of South America! We spend a few days without Campervan Ben in the capital of Argentina. Apparently, Buenos Aires is also known as the Paris of South America, which we can confirm from our impressions. The urban canyons are often interrupted by dense greenery, and the wide streets form the green, pulsating lifelines of the city. Not only that, but it also makes Buenos Aires really inviting. And there is a lot to see: Architecture, culture, football – there’s something for everyone!

Teatro Colón

The Colón Theater is an ideal stop on our tourist tour of the city over several days. It is world-famous and was inaugurated shortly after the start of the 20th century. Three European architects were needed before it was opened, as the first two died prematurely. For certain people, the Colón Theater is cursed. This curse does not apply to us, we enjoy the beautifully restored building elements such as a gold leaf ceiling in a foyer and the technically mature paintwork. Overall, it is a mixture of many older, sumptuous styles. In addition, the acoustics are very good thanks to the horseshoe shape of the theater hall. Sophisticated resonance chambers under the balconies allow for analog amplification of the voices on stage, making it possible to hear every detail right up to the back row and the 7th tier. The light rehearsal is particularly exciting on our tour of the Colón Theater. We fall between theater performances, which means that there will be no performances for the next 2 or 3 weeks. However, they are working hard on the next production. We attend the light rehearsal for a small scene of a work that will last over three hours. In the 10 minutes that we are in the theater, we don’t register any movement on the stage or in the set. Only the spotlight cone is adjusted to the scene: Slightly narrower, yet slightly larger, but cut off at the side. We’ve never thought about it like this before, but it’s crazy how much time must go into preparing a theater performance.

Birthplace of tango

Buenos Aires is said to be the birthplace of tango. This is probably not quite so clear, but don’t tell that to any proud Argentinians from Buenos Aires. Off we go on the hunt of tango. Hundreds of tourists are ushered through the tango shows in the city center every evening. However, the program is unconvincing, relatively expensive and the best seats are reserved for guests who book a rather expensive dinner. In the Barrancas de Belgrano Park, we get our first taste of the tango. In a covered pavilion, people who want to dance meet here every weekend evening to dance tango with different dance partners. We find it exciting! There are beginners and amateur professionals alike. As absolute amateurs, we can see this immediately with our expert eye. But that’s not enough for us. Finally, we book a tango show in a pedestrian zone a little south of the city center. We are here for the 1.5km-long market, but why don’t we treat ourselves to a deeper insight into the world of tango? Said, done, booked. We are fascinated! The three dance couples dance across the stage at extreme speed in what we found to be really impressive, precisely timed dance steps, sometimes even between the audience and as an acrobatic variation on ropes above the audience. In one hour, the dancers packed many different forms of tango into a highly charged show. It was impressive and fascinating to see how tango is lived here in Buenos Aires as a philosophy of life and not just as a form of dance.

Palermo – the district to linger in

Whether in the middle of the night or for breakfast coffee. Palermo is the district to satisfy all gastronomic cravings. We are on a little mission. After many recommendations from other travelers who have been to Buenos Aires before us, we test out the exquisite ice cream stores. One after the other, but we are particularly taken with Alchemy. Locally produced ice cream with unusual flavors: Blue cheese ice cream is available as well as beetroot ice cream or wasabi avocado with a spicy note, for example. There’s even potato ice cream, crazy. And all of them are cleverly balanced in their own way and therefore delicious! The sweet ice cream varieties are just as convincing. We are in ice cream heaven. And that was just our personal favorite. To come to this conclusion, we stupidly had to try out a few ice cream stores in Buenos Aires – we enjoyed it. The Argentinians compete with the Italians for the best ice cream.

Tigre – Puerto de Frutos

Tigre was recommended to us as an excursion just outside Buenos Aires. This is a somewhat smaller suburb in the north of Buenos Aires. The old fruit port in particular is a magnet for visitors. Everything revolves around the river delta of the Paraná de las Pamas river, which is directly adjacent to the port. Somehow, however, we are not really convinced by this place. We don’t fancy a cruise on the river and many of the market stalls in the fruit port are closed or selling souvenirs that are of little interest to us. We only have the train ride to Tigre and back and a coffee by the river to fill the gap. That’s all Tigre has to offer us. It’s probably very seasonal and there might be a lot more going on at the weekend. But then it seems to be overcrowded again – well, all in all, not our tourist destination.

Buenos Aires – we would come again

We really enjoyed our eight days in Buenos Aires. We spent some time doing tourist attractions, but also just spent some time being in the city. And that’s exactly what Buenos Aires is ideal for: time to linger. There are many culinary offerings, green parks and streets as small, natural retreats and for culture enthusiasts there is the highest density of theaters in the world. Then there is the tango and the many markets, although we only visited one. And the most colorful spot in all of Buenos Aires in the Boca district lightens things up again, if it were ever too gray in this cosmopolitan city. We like Buenos Aires and would probably even come back if we were ever in the area again.