Buenos Aires - San Telmo & La Boca

Every Argentinian I've ever met will mention how "European," or how similar to Paris is their stately capital city Buenos Aires. Travel guides reckon that Argentina is oddly positioned in Latin America, and feels greater kinship with its European cousins, from which the overwhelming majority are descended, than its neighbours Brazil, Bolivia and Chile.

We may be visiting a place in the bottom corner of a developing continent, but Buenos Aires does its very best to convince you otherwise. There are the stunning grand baroque buildings adorning its the central Plaza de Mayo, including the president's crib, Casa Rosada (pink house) and the Catedral Metropolitana. Spanning out from the so-called microcentro are a web of grand avenues. And by grand I mean WIIIDDDE. One of them, Av 9 de Julio, is about 20 lanes wide and has four separate pedestrian crossings to help you across this enormous road.

Argie ''European'' pride

The streets of the centre are lined with beautiful 19th century apartment blocks, boasting posh little shrub-lined balconies. We could be in Paris but there are not nearly enough trendy cafes. Instead, there are cheese-filled delis, shops selling empanadas, grocery stores with giant butcher shops in the back and takeaway shops selling steaks, burgers and sausages.

If you face north to the Rio de Plata (which you can't see much of because there is a giant marsh in the way), to the left there are a series of giant parks, upmarket apartments and trendy shops in the barrios of Recoleta and Palermo. To the right is the slightly more shabby but equally trendy neighbourhood of San Telmo, followed by the seedy former port district of La Boca. We divided our 10-day stay in Buenos Aires along this axis - four days being urban hipsters in a grungy hostel in San Telmo, and the remainder in a stylish modern apartment in Palermo.

Like Argentina itself, San Telmo has had a riches to rags history, but is in the process of clawing its way back into the spotlight. With rows and rows of tattered colonial mansions, San Telmo was originally built as an upscale area, until sickness plagues drove the urban elite to move further north. It then became more of a ghetto, as the big houses were subdivided and overcrowded with large families. More recently, as artists and general boho types became interested in the area, it is starting to gentrify again.

In cafe/bar El Federal at San Telmo

Quirky clothes, antiques, homewares and bric-a-brac shops have popped up along San Telmo's cobblestone streets. They sit among the more established institutions of plush corner cafe/bars, so diverse that you can go there for a coffee, a cake, a glass of wine, a sandwich, or even a steak at just about any hour of the day. These little haunts are beautifully decorated, the walls lined with wine and fancy sherry bottles, historic pictures and antique bits and pieces.

Calle Defensa is a focal point for San Telmo, where you can find the most interesting shops and restaurants, particularly its intersection with Calle Chile, which is lined with sandwich bars and cafes that stay open until late. Further along Defensa is plaza Dorego, which plays host to a big antiques fair every Sunday. We missed the fair but arrived in time to see the tango dancing which takes over the plaza in the evening. A giant dancefloor with big speakers is set up in the plaza, and couples just show up and practice their moves. 

Do you tango?

Steak houses are another key institution in San Telmo. As in most of Argentina, you don't have to pay top dollar at a swanky place to enjoy a tender, perfectly grilled hunk of meat. We had a good tenderloin (called lomo) and an average bife de chorizo at Don Ernesto on Calle Carlos Calvo, although we suspect we were given ''gringo grill'' treatment after we ordered our steaks jugoso (medium rare) and they came out decidedly medium - no blood in sight. We also shared a butterflied t-bone at Desnivels on Defensa, which was not quite as tender, and again overcooked. To our dismay, other diners in the place had managed to order thick pink juicy steaks - obviously we need to learn the Spanish word for ''still moo-ing.''

A few blocks east of San Telmo near the waterfront are a series of canals that were dredged out with the intention of becoming the new port (when the original one at La Boca became too small). In typical Argentine style, the digging took too long - by the time it was completed 30 years later, the canals were too narrow to accommodate the recently expanded berths of modern ships. The project was abandoned and the area fell into decay, joining the many other square kilometres of disued port areas around the city.

Stylish modern buildings line the renewed canal precinct

But the bulldozers moved in and created a huge urban renewal area, to rival that of Docklands, Canary Wharf (and maybe one day Barangaroo?). The canals, or diques as they are known, are lined with tarted up warehouses (a la Jones Bay Wharf), modern business park style squat office blocks and shadowed by huge apartment towers. Wide paved walkways line the canals and are popular with power walkers, dog walkers and, another Buenos Aires specialty group, rollerbladers.

That's right - its not the 90s any more but no one told the Argies. Rollerblading is immensely popular here - people drive from all over BA to these wide, flat expanses to pull on their 'blades and go for a cruise. We spotted many people practicing fancy moves - going backwards, spinning, breaking suddenly. There were a couple of skateboarders out and about but their numbers paled in comparison compared to the rollerblading crowd.

The No 10 Messi jersey is a market fave

South of San Telmo, clustered around the disused port area (which nobody has yet bothered to rebuild) is La Boca, a far shabbier part of town. Colonial buildings are far more dilapidated here, and many are boarded up and look like they have turned into squats. We took a stroll down here one Saturday - despite the usual warnings of it being ''dangerous,'' we found it perfectly fine to wander down the main drag, although it didn't really provide much entertainment in the form of shop and/or people watching.

La Boca's smelly waterfront area - its thanks to the black estuary-like riverbank - has a wide footpath, but it isn't populated with the usual walking and rollerblading crowd. Further along though is a buzzing precinct filled with markets, tango bars and restaurants. Along El Caminito (the little walkway), the shops and houses are painted a variety of vivid, clashing colours. There are tarted up makeshift dwellings that look like they may have been constructed from shipping containers. Adding to the colourful medley are bright street murals.