If you’re considering visiting Buenos Aires in January and February, don’t. It’s too hot. Lots of sweating, which is especially bad since I’m a disgusting waste of life who sits in his own filth most of the time, only washing his clothes like once a month. But what am I going to do, pay the laundry lady $10 every week to wash them? Rich get richer? I don’t think so.

Anyways, here’s a picture of a building I liked enough to take a photo of it. They have a lot of architecture like this all over the city, giving it a much more European feel than a lot of other South American cities.

And this is a street in Buenos Aires. You could probably tell that. But the buildings are cool and there are some trees and all the way down you can see the Obelisk.

Teatro Colon is a famous theater. It’s famous because of how beautiful it is on the inside. But this is a picture of the outside, which is nothing great so I didn’t both going in. You know what they say about judging books by their cover. Actually, it’s really beautiful in there, so Google a picture of it if you want.

So this is the Obelisk. It’s about halfway between Casa Rosada and Palacia Rosa, and was designed to be easy to drive around. There’s also a McDonald’s nearby, and I assume some kind of Metal/Punk club, because one weekend morning I arrived back to this area on an overnight bus and it was full of people wearing black clothing and exotic accessories. Nothing more Metal than chicken nuggets on a Sunday morning.

Art is a thing people do, so I went to see some. Here you can see pictures of art. This one was the Museum of Latin American Art, a mixture of old stuff and new stuff. But they also have your classic “art” museums with impressionist paintings, probably brought over by the Nazis.

In Northern Palermo there’s some green spaces in addition to the museums and other tourist things. I wandered through el Rosedal De Palermo, which I think means the rose gardens of Palermo. They are pretty, plus I can take a bus quite close to them, walk through it, and end up at a Starbucks. Doesn’t get much better than that.

It’s no secret that I love buildings with construction stuff on them, and Buenos Aires doesn’t disappoint. Casa Rosada, the royal palace where the President or whatever lives, is pretty much surrounded by construction projects. In this case, it also serves as a metaphor for how Argentina is trying to rebuild and make things awesome but they can’t really.

They do have some very modern bars in Buenos Aires, especially in Palermo, but I found a couple nice little ones closer to my area too. This one is Del Toro, which checked the boxes for me: veggie burger, beer, wifi, and not very busy so I could just chill out in the evenings.

The people of Buenos Aires also like to march about things, and I think this one was taken on some kind of political holiday near Casa Rosada. It makes it a bit difficult to navigate through the city, but they do have good, cheap street food at these protests. I have no qualms about buying fried bread items from a man on the street with a basket at this point. Roll the dice!

Inside the San Telmo market, where I walk through all the time of course, is this lovely little doll shop. I was thinking I should probably buy some to add to the doll cabinet back home, but I just couldn’t find the perfect one. They’re all so wonderful, this lady must make a fortune.

As nice as it was hanging out in Buenos Aires, I decided I should actually try to see a bit more of the country too. Argentina charges tourists a high tax to take flights in the country, so on principle I took the 20 hour bus ride to Iguazu instead. It’s not so bad, you get to see a lot of the country, and the buses are actually pretty good so I slept a lot. But my FitBit doesn’t register that I’m sleeping, so was I really? I imagine someone in Silicon Valley was monitoring my activity and getting super worried.

I admit, my planning here was not the best. It was my birthday, so I figured I should go to the falls instead of sitting around and going the next day instead. Waiting would have meant that I could avoid the Easter holiday weekend tourists (a lot of local tourists from Brazil/Argentina/Uruguay), and avoided my unlucky bus ride that was to come. But, I went anyways, and in a sense I was lucky because it was a really nice day, and despite my head being a little foggy from the bus ride, it was a good day to walk around the waterfalls.

The angles I took pictures from made the falls look a little more brown than you’d hope, but they are still beautiful. And there are so many of them. They seem to go on forever, and give a very different look than Niagara.

Brazil requires a $160 visa to get into the country, and given that I would only stay a day or two, I decided that wasn’t worth it. So I only saw the Argentine side of the falls, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ll admit I spent a lot of time on buses for the minimal amount of time I spent in Iguazu. Probably should have just hung out there a couple more days. But I didn’t, instead opting for close to 50 hours in buses over the course of 3 days. After a 4-hour delay and then a 22-hour bus ride, I ended up in Cordoba, the second largest city in Argentina.

While Buenos Aires looks and feels much more Western, Cordoba is more of your typical South American city. Basically kind of small and dingy with a refusal to gentrify. It’s a hodgepodge of modern burger joins and coffee shops next to lingerie shops and children’s party stores, like no thought was put into arranging the city.

I actually had a conversation with a couple guys from Australia, which was the first I’d talked in what felt like months. It was pretty exhausting. We went to a hostel cultural exchange meetup and drank regular Budweiser they were giving away just for showing up. Which makes sense, as this is the appropriate price of Budweiser. I hung out for a little while, then went home at a reasonable hour like a responsible adult. Their “party until 6am” thing is not something I’m into. I’ve got errands.

Back in Buenos Aires, I spent a few days closer to the capital building. Because it was a little different and I like a good march. It’s close to a giant bookstore, El Ateneo Grand Splendid. And since everyone loves a good bookstore, I got a couple pictures of it.

Other than that, I mostly just ate empanadas. Spinach ones, which they just call “verdura” were most of my diet, but I could also eat the Caprese, Cheese, and Vegetable ones. My recent blood test revealed I am a perfect person except for more bad cholesterol level, which is just a little above optimum, and I believe all these empanadas are to blame.