The Best of Buenos Aires with Los Niños

We came back to Buenos Aires after Mendoza, and all together have spent more than a week in the city. While I would not call BA a very family-friendly city, because it’s noisy and polluted, huge with lots of traffic, there are pleasant activities and itineraries to take with the children. What I found most fascinating in BA is the mix of old and new. A very unique city with lots of different parts of town to explore by foot.

On our 2nd stay, we rented one of the loft-apartment of Home Hotel. It’s an excellent place to stay with the family. You get the best of both worlds: an apartment with a kitchen and a small courtyard, very private, quiet and spacious, and you get all the great services of the hotel, swimming pool and staff help. It’s located in Palermo Hollywood, my favorite part of town in BA with San Telmos.

Here is Home Hotel’ Best of Buenos Aires with Kids, all tried and tested (almost!).

Buenos Aires Zoo, opened in 1988, with a surprisingly great diversity of animals. As per Marcelo: Better than Regent’s Park Zoo in London! People who live nearby complain they hear the lions roaring all the time. i think it’s a good sign. Right in the center of the city, in Palermo, Av. Sarmiento y Las Heras. Closed Mondays.

And right outside, you will see horse carriages…Marcelo and Amalya loved taking a stroll the old fashion way.

Interactive Science Museum (Forbidden NOT to touch). This is a super interactive science museum and Marcelo absolutely loved the place… while I got super stressed about not figuring out most of the experiments!!! It reminded me how bad I was at school with physics.

The museum is right in Recoleta by the famous Cemetery (a great place to visit too). It makes for a pleasant half day trip, to be followed by a mouth-watering and inexpensive lunch of empanadas at El Sanjuanino.

In addition to the above children-centric places, these are some of BozAround favorites, equally easy on the children.

- A Sunday stroll in San Telmo…

Every Sunday, there’s the flea market of San Telmo. It’s not over crowded but beware of pickpockets. Enjoy a cheap and yummy lunch of empanadas (sooooo good) or pizza & pasta at Pedro Telmo (Bolivar, 962. Tel: 43 62 36 94), and stroll around with a few pesos in the pocket, to give away to the many street performers.

Marcelo found some super heroes comics at the market…

- A morning spent at La Boca…

La Boca is the notoriously dodgy yet most touristy part of the city, because of the very photogenic colourful streets (do NOT got there after dark!!). We went quite early in the morning and as such avoided the tourist buses. Loved it!! The atmosphere is very old-school, yet one of the most exciting art foundation in the city is there, PROA, with a Louise Bourgeois exhibition going on right now (and her famous spider which any child will be amazed at).

Marcelo and Ceki also visited the football stadium of Boca Junior, and we all met for a delicious Italian lunch at Il Matterello (MArtin Rodriguez, 517), an institution in the city.

In La Boca, I stumbled upon this store, owned by a very elegant Spanish-immigrant woman of 86 years old.

Beautiful vintage dresses and many other nostalgic objects. I don’t have the address but if you walk around, you might recognize it. She has had her shop for 25 years. She was so sweet, with such a gentle smile. I barely had any change on me, otherwise I could have bought so much. I left with a vintage silk dress, off-white, which I told myself Amalya might want one day (for her wedding?!)

- An afternoon in Palermo…

…Visiting the MALBA museum and its impressive collection of LAtin American contemporary art in a stunning modern construction. Nearby by is Persicco, for one of the best ice cream in town (remember, most of Argentines are of Italian-descent)..And not far is Plaza Alemana with a good playground. A great place to mingle with local children in their school uniforms at the end of the day.

You’ll find lots of guides about Buenos Aires so I won’t say much more about where to eat & shop…Just one address that I fell in love with: DIVIA. If you’re going to bring back one thing for yourself from Argentina, it’s shoes. And these ones are so beautiful and so unique.