The Bosques de Palermo (Palermo Woods) is the city’s largest park, and home to many of the the area's best distractions. Sprawling over more than 198 acres, the Woods contain manmade lakes, sculptures, gardens, basketball and street hockey courts, exercise equipment, and running and biking paths. During the day, you can rent rollerblades, bikes, and paddleboats. Some of the other attractions in the Woods include El Rosedal, a rose garden with more than a thousand different species of rosebushes, the Galileo Galilei Planetarium, and the Plastic Arts Museum. Later at night, part of the park becomes the city’s Red Light District.

The rough-and-tumble Caminito neighborhood of Buenos Aires is where you’ll find the brightly-colored slums where much of the city’s working poor live. Resist the urge to take pictures of the candy-colored houses (it’s tacky and rude), and just walk through the neighborhood where the tango was born and experience to real soul of the city. Enjoy a traditional meal at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, share drinks with friends and tango the night away. For the shier dancers, many tourist-trap restaurants offer free tango demonstrations with meals.

In the Cementerio de la Recoleta, you’ll find some of the most ostentatious memorials in the world. The monumental crypts are decorated with such intricate stone and metal sculpture, that it’s clear the bereaved wanted to send the deceased off in style. Most visitors come for Evita Perón’s grave, but wander about the cemetery (or take a guided English-language tour) to find the most ostentatious graves – including those of presidents, artists, and athletes.

Named for the celebrated Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, the Centro Cultural Borges is a grand hub of the arts. Even with its large collection of the great visual artists, there are exhibits dedicated to up-and-comers, as well as performance spaces for dance and theatre, and a cinema for independent films. Perhaps unusually, the Centro is located on top of the up-scale Galerías Pacífico mall.

For a more traditional art gallery experience, check out the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, home to 32 galleries of modern and classic art, including works by the major European Impressionists and the most important Argentine artists.

The 223-foot-tall Obelisk of Buenos Aires has stood since 1936 as a symbol of the city and its people, despite not having any particular historical significance. Some suggest that the giant phallic symbol represents the city’s overwhelming machismo and sexual energy. When it gets covered with an enormous condom on World AIDS Day, the analogy is unavoidable.

Since 2002, the Floralis Generica has stood in the center of the reflecting pool in the Plaza Naciones Unidas (United Nations Plaza), representing all the flowers of the world. The flower’s giant, shiny, metal petals open and close at sunrise and sunset just like those of a real flower. The beautiful plaza in which it sits offers many charming viewpoints of the flower and many tranquil places to rest and relax.

At the heart of Buenos Aires is the Plaza de Mayo. Named in memory of the city’s May, 1810 declaration of independence from Spain (the rest of Argentina would follow after six years of war). The plaza is now Buenos Aires’ centre of civic life. It is surrounded by some of the city’s great sights, including the grand Catedral Metropolitan, the Museo de Cabildo (town hall), and the Casa Rosada (Pink House), the presidential residence. Make sure to take a tour of the stunning architecture and decor of the Casa Rosada and the famous balconies from which Juan and Evita Perón gave their addresses to the people.
Protests and demonstrations are a regular occurrence in the Plaza. The most famous of them were carried out by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who demanded answers about their sons who were “disappeared” during the country’s military rule. The Mothers continue to meet in the plaza every Thursday at 3:30pm.

The grand Teatro Colón is the second-largest performance house in the southern hemisphere (after the Sydney Opera House), and considered one of the greatest opera houses in the world.
This spell-binding example of Buenos Aires’ splendid old-world-inspired architecture, complete with deep red carpeting, heavy curtains, grand halls, and intricate design work gives the theatre a well-deserved sense of grandeur. Seeing a performance here is a must.