You don't have to eat beef in Buenos Aires

Just what is a vegetarian (albeit of the fish eating variety) supposed to do in Argentina? You just can't escape from the beef, and everyone who visits raves about how good it tastes. I've known more than one committed vegetarian cave in over a juicy Argentine steak. So what was I going to do? Would I starve??

Fortunately, no, at least not in Buenos Aires - far from it, in fact. The first week that I was here, I was with my friend Chris from home, who was over here on holiday. So this seemed like a good opportunity to blow the budget a little and try out some of the many restaurants and cafes here. I very quickly learned some very important facts - firstly, yes, the Argentines do love their beef but they also love their pasta and pizza almost as much. Secondly, they have a collective extremely sweet tooth. Pretty much every street has its own confiteria selling delicious facturas, little sweet pastries that, at 80 centavos each (about 15p), are very hard to resist. The ice cream here is the best I've ever tasted....so if come home having put on weight and needing lots of fillings, that's why!

The third thing I learned is that porteños (the people of Buenos Aires) like to eat late and party even later. Chris and I ate out every night she was here. Although we never arrived at a restaurant before 10pm and sometimes later, invariably they would only start filling up as we were leaving. The sole exception to this was a place called Desnivel, in San Telmo, which seemed to be constantly full (justifiably so, apparently - Chris said the steak she had there was the best she'd ever tasted). Just as the restaurants are open later, so too are the bars. As a general rule, people don't go out to bars until after midnight, and the clubs don't even open til around 3am. Not that we actually went to any clubs...being the boring old 30-somethings that we are now, the latest we called it a night was around 3.30am. We went out on a couple of nights to Plaza Serrano, in an area called Palermo. This is full of lots of very chic and trendy ' faux bohemian' (to quote the guidebook) bars and restaurants which are great places to hang out. One of my favourite things about going out in Buenos Aires is that, despite how late the bars stay open, people just don't get drunk here. It's more about having a good night than getting wasted, which I thought was incredibly civilised. No hangovers in the morning!

Just in case you were wondering, I have actually done more than just eat and drink. Buenos Aires has the feel of a European city, and one of the delights of it is just wandering the streets and soaking up the atmosphere. But that said, there are some definite 'sights' to see. One of these is the Recoleta Cemetary, where Evita is buried. It's fascinating to wander around its alleys and admire these amazingly impressive monuments to the dead (BTW, I did take photos, but then copied them onto a CD which I promptly gave to Chris to take home, so I don't have them with me). Another sight is the Feria de San Telmo, which is held weekly near where I've been staying. This basically takes over the main square in the barrio, Plaza Dorrego, and its surrounding streets, with a mixture of street performances, market stalls, antiques, jewellery stalls, souvenir stalls and much much more. It's captivating blend of sights and sounds that kept me entertained for hours on end. It's a great chance to see and hear tango being performed...milonga orchestras, dancers, singers....I loved it! And after all the market stalls have been taken down, in the evening, one side of the Plaza Dorrego is transformed into an open air 'milonga'. A milonga is a place where ordinary people go to dance tango, and I particularly enjoyed watching them....there's something about seeing normal people, dressed in everyday clothes, dancing tango that, for me, seems more real and passionate than professionals on stage.

One of the other big tourist sights is El Caminito, in La Boca. This tiny street, full of brightly painted tin houses and art stalls, is famous and features in all the guidebooks. It does look lovely, but I didn't enjoy visiting it. To me, it seemd to sum up one of the big contradictions of Buenos Aires. La Boca, the area around El Caminito, is one of the poorest in Buenos Aires. The guidebooks and the hostels warn tourists not to wander away from El Caminito, and take a bus or taxi straight there and straight back again. To me, the sight of so many snap happy tourists (OK, I admit, I had my camera and was taking photos too) in an area surrounded by so much poverty, next to a river that's so polluted it literally stinks, was a little too incongruous. So I didn't stay long. But as I said, this is one of the big contradictions of Buenos Aires. On the one hand it seems very wealthy, and it sttracts thousands and thousands of tourists, but on the other hand it's still very poor. The abundance of chic restaurants and boutiques gives the impression of disposable incomes...yet many professionals here can't even afford to shop or eat there. Puerto Madero, a new development of bars and restaurants in former warehouses, wouldn't look out of place in the centre of London. But when Chris and I went out for drinks one evening with her cousin, a lawyer who lives and works here, she said they she and her friends like to walk around Puerto Madero but they can't afford to eat there. And while some areas of the city are full of beautiful houses, in others (like San Telmo) the pavements are in such a bad state of repair it's easy to trip up. And on the subject of pavements, they're literally covered in dog shit. It's quite disgusting! So, while (like every other western tourist) I've been marvelling at how cheap everything is here, I've also been reminding myself to appreciate the fact that I can afford to come here and to eat out.

This week, after Chris left, I've been taking things a lot slower as I've been doing a Spanish course all week. There's no going to bed at 3am when you have to get up at 7.30am to get to class on time! Tonight is my last night in Buenos Aires, and I'm planning to go to a milonga. So I think that's everything on the list of 'must-dos' in Buenos Aires ticked off the list...well, apart from the steak :-)

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