Buenos Aires - Palermo & Recoleta

Leafy Palermo's avenues are lined with plush modern apartment blocks. This inner city neighbourhood, a few kilometres north of central Buenos Aires, has a much more upmarket demographic than the artsy hipsters crowd in San Telmo. Groups of women in expensive-looking leather boots walk their precious pooches among middle aged ladies pushing designer prams with their well-heeled husbands.

Palermo is criss-crossed by a network of grand tree-lined avenues. The enormous Avenida Liberador has a roundabout with a huge statue of Simon Bolivar, the leader of independence movements across South America. Avenidas Santa Fe and General de Las Heras are the area's commercial centres, and are lined with shops, delis, wine stores and cafes. Many of the quieter streets are home to neighbourhood steak houses, which serve up delicious juicy tenderloins, creamy potatoes and crispy salads.

One side of Avenida Liberador is lined with a series of rolling green parks, from the Buenos Aires racecourse and polo club (another British sport that enjoys unlikely popularity), to the Japanese Garden and jogging mecca Parque de 3 Febrero. This park has a tarmac circuit built around a geese-filled lake and historic houses, and is crammed with exercisers - joggers, walkers, cyclists and the ubiquitous Buenos Aires rollerblader. When we went on a Saturday there were rollerblading workshops, where groups were being taught various tricks and how to roll in and out of a series of cones.

One of Palermo's grand avenues

A couple of Palermo's parks are frequented by another Argentine peculiarity - professional dog walkers. There are so many dogs in the city that this has become a respected profession. Dog walkers must be licensed, can take up to eight charges with them (although in reality many have many more), walk them for two hours twice and day and some even have veterinary training so they can look out for ailments.

We found a park that was like a depot for the dog walkers, with up to 100 pooches running around or tethered to the ground. Seeing dog walkers in action is a hilarious site, as they cruise down the streets with an army of pooches hanging off a messy tangle of leashes.

Dog walker - this one is a beagle specialist

Palermo was our home for a week of our stay in Buenos Aires. We rented an apartment close to the subway station, just off bustling Avenida Santa Fe. Our place was a studio shoebox but had a spacious terrace to enjoy in the springtime sunshine. After months of being on the road and staying in mangy hostels, it was so nice to have our own pad again and cook what we liked in the kitchen.

All of our neighbours in the apartment block were super-friendly, and eager to make small talk when when we bumped into them in the lifts. Very different to the hostile looks I used to get from unfriendly neighbours when I lived in Sydney's inner suburbs!

Neighbouring Recoleta is even more upmarket than Palermo. I felt decidedly under dressed in my well-worn backpacker garb when walking the streets. All of the women here are very well-dressed, and hang out in fancy coffee shops and bakeries, sipping tea and nibbling on Argentine delicacies media lunas (small custard-filled croissants) and alfajors. These are sweet biscuits lathered with gooey caramelly dulce de leche, smushed together like oreos and covered in either meringue or chocolate.

Giant mausoleums at Recoleta cemetery

Recoleta's star attraction is its cemetery, which is like a mini-city of enormous marble and stone mausoleums. It is laid out in a grid radiating from a central statue of Christopher Columbus, with the mausoleums arranged like houses along a series of avenues.

Some of the tombs were so well-constructed, they looked bigger and sturdier than much of the housing we have seen people crowded into throughout Latin America. Many luminaries are buried here, including Evita Peron, several former presidents, doctors and scientists.

Recoleta is also home to a number of art galleries, including its local cultural centre and the Bellas Artes or fine arts museum. Both were free. The cultural centre had an interesting photographic exhibition called the people of Buenos Aires. It had quirky shots of all types of people, including street toughs, homeless people living under freeways, children, corporate types and some of BA's many immigrant groups including Chinese, Japanese and Bolivians.

Sadly, Buenos Aires is our last stop in the Americas, after 10 months learning Spanish and travelling from Baja California in Mexico through Central America to Colombia and through South America. Buenos Aires is amazingly mellow and easy to deal with in spite of being such a large city, and was a definite highlight along with Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Havana and Bogota. We are heading to Europe now, on our way to the UK where we hope to find work in our respective professions (journalism and electrical engineering). We will be in Germany for two weeks, just in time for Oktoberfest! Stay tuned for our next adventure as El Mundo hits Europe.

Our apartment block in Palermo