Buenos Aires does not start until sunset. Plan the rest around that.
Which tango house seats you where you can actually see the floor. What a nine-course asado costs. Whether Tigre or a gaucho ranch is the better day out of the city. Reviews of every tour you can book in Buenos Aires.
A tango house, a walk through La Boca, a long asado, a day on the delta.
The four bookings a first week in Buenos Aires hangs off. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first nightPiazzolla Tango Show with Optional DinnerAn orchestra, a full company and a dinner sitting that opens two hours before the curtain. Take the dinner if you want the front tables.
02The morning walkLa Boca Guided Walking Tour in EnglishTwo hours through the painted zinc of La Boca with someone who can tell you which of it is real. Cheap, and the best introduction the city has.
03The long dinner9-Course Argentine Meat Tasting at Fogón AsadoNine courses of Argentine beef in a candlelit room, cooked in front of you. The meal the rest of the trip gets measured against.
04The day on waterClassic Tigre Delta TourWooden launches through the Parana delta, an hour north of the city. Green, slow and nothing like the pavement you left.
Grand dinner show, small floor, or a lesson before you watch. Pick your night.
Tango is the one thing Buenos Aires will not let you skip. Three ways to spend the evening with it, what it costs to walk in, and which one suits how much you want to dance yourself.
The Buenos Aires days out more travellers book than any other.
Every Buenos Aires tour we have reviewed →The tours the city keeps selling out, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Piazzolla Tango Show with Optional Dinner
See Piazzolla Tango in Buenos Aires, with a 75-minute show in Galería Güemes and optional dinner, wine, and a short tango lesson.
From · $48
Read our review →
2
City Highlights Guided Tour with Transfer
from $38
3
Hop-On Hop-Off City Bus Tour
from $35
4
La Boca Guided Walking Tour in English
from $13
5
La Recoleta Cemetery Guided Tour in English
from $13
6
9-Course Argentine Meat Tasting at Fogón Asado
from $93
7
Gaucho and Ranch Day Tour
from $168
8
Madero Tango Show with Optional Dinner
from $25
Six Buenos Aires neighbourhoods, and the best half day in each.
Painted houses at the mouth of the Riachuelo, marble avenues of the dead in Recoleta, cobbles and antiques in San Telmo, Palermo under jacarandas, glass and cranes on the docks. Pick where you are standing tomorrow.
Buenos Aires eats beef the way other cities drink coffee.
Nine-course beef tastings in candlelit rooms, empanada lessons that finish as lunch, and Malbec poured by people who can tell you which side of the Andes it grew on. Book the long dinners early. They only seat once.
The best days in Buenos Aires Province start on the northbound train.
An hour up the coast the pavement stops and the Parana breaks into a thousand wooden-jetty islands. Two hours west it turns to flat cattle country and estancia lunches. Across the river there is a Portuguese smuggling town with the wrong century still standing in it.
Buenos Aires on foot, before you work out the Subte.
Every city tour →
The centre is walkable and the distances lie. Plaza de Mayo to the obelisk is further than it looks and Palermo is a taxi away, so the first day is the one to hand over to somebody who knows the order to do it in.
La Boca and the centre, walked properly
The cheapest good hours in the city. A guide walks you through Caminito, the Riachuelo bend and the tenement yards, and explains why half of it is painted in ship paint.
Teatro Colon, in daylight
Seven tiers of gilt and red velvet, and an acoustic the orchestra will happily demonstrate. Visits run to a fixed daily timetable and stop dead whenever there is a performance.
The parks and the docks by bike
Buenos Aires is table-flat and the northern parks are laced with bike lanes. Half a day gets you Palermo’s lakes, the ecological reserve and the Puerto Madero docks without a hill in it.
What a day in Buenos Aires actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A good number of the best days in this city cost less than a steak dinner.
Barrio walks, cemetery tours, theatre tickets and the boat up the delta.
The full-day standards: tango dinner shows, food crawls, bike days and the ranch out west.
Private guides, tasting menus with the beef flight, and the flight north to Iguazu.
- 1Gaucho and Ranch Day Tourfrom $168
- 2Gaucho Day Trip from Buenos Aires: Santa Susana Ranchfrom $313
- 3Wine Tasting and Lunch at Bodega Gamboafrom $169
Three Buenos Aires places with no equivalent anywhere else.
Grand avenues and good steak exist in plenty of cities. A cemetery laid out as a marble town, an opera house built to out-sing Europe, and a stadium that shakes are harder to copy.
La Recoleta Cemetery
Four and a half thousand vaults laid out on named streets, with avenues, corners and addresses, so that the wealthy of Buenos Aires could go on being neighbours. Marble angels lean out over the walkways, the doors have glass in them, and Eva Peron is in a plain black family vault most people walk straight past. Go with someone who knows the stories, or you are just looking at stone.
- 1La Recoleta Cemetery Guided Tour in English★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,359 reviews
- 2Buenos Aires Bike Tour: North Districts, Recoleta and Palermo★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 91 reviews
- 3Recoleta Cemetery – Small Group Tour of History & Secrets★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 53 reviews
Teatro Colon
The city built its opera house in 1908 to prove Buenos Aires belonged in the same sentence as Paris and Milan, and then got the acoustics right by accident of horsehair, wood and a dome. Guides take you through the golden hall, the boxes with the grilles where widows watched unseen, and the workshops below, where the costumes are still made.
- 1Tickets to Boca Juniors Museum & Stadium★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 581 reviews
- 2Teatro Colon Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 571 reviews
- 3Teatro Colon Guided Tour Admission Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 208 reviews
La Bombonera
Boca Juniors play in a three-sided box of a stadium wedged into the streets of La Boca, so steep that the stands visibly flex when the crowd jumps. The museum and pitch-side visits run on non-match days only, which makes the fixture list part of your planning whether you follow the football or not.
- 1Tickets to Boca Juniors Museum & Stadium★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 581 reviews
- 2Soccer Match in Buenos Aires with Transfers and Local Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 103 reviews
- 3Boca Juniors and River Plate Football Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 82 reviews
Four Buenos Aires bookings that will not wait until you land.
Most of this city can be arranged over breakfast for that same evening. These four run on theatre timetables, fixture lists, park gates and a dinner seating that fills from the front row back.
- 01Teatro Colon Guided TourVisits run to a fixed daily timetable inside a working opera house, and the doors shut to visitors whenever there is a performance.
- 02Tickets to Boca Juniors Museum & StadiumThe stadium and its museum close to visitors on match days, and the fixture list moves.
- 033-Day Iguazu Falls Tour with Optional Airfare from Buenos AiresThe falls are a flight and a national park away. The day is built around the plane and the park gates, not around your morning.
- 04Piazzolla Tango Show with Optional DinnerDinner seating at the old tango houses opens hours before the curtain, and the tables with a clear view of the floor go first.
Nobody in Buenos Aires eats before nine.
Kitchens fill at half past nine, tango houses seat dinner at eight and start the show at ten, and the milongas do not warm up until after midnight. Which means the afternoon is yours and the evening is the part to book. Sleep late, walk in the heat, and hand the night over.
La Boca, San Telmo, Recoleta, Palermo, then the delta: the week almost everybody does first.
La Boca
San Telmo
Recoleta
Palermo
TigreBy place — barrios and the country beyond them
By kind of day — floor, table, saddle or river
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