Our temporary home: San Telmo, Buenos Aires, Argentina

After our overnight bus, we arrived in Buenos Aires at 9am on Sunday 1 April and for the first of many times to come I sang in my head “What’s new, Buenos Aires? I’m new!” (from the Evita musical). We rented an apartment on AirBnB in the heart of San Telmo; the city’s oldest neighbourhood or barrio. We chose San Telmo because a friend had lived there years ago and described it as similar to Melbourne’s Fitzroy, whereas the other popular place; Palermo, is more like Chapel St and home to lots of American ex-pats. It was a very quiet, drizzly morning and getting to our new home was an easy subway ride.

There’s so much to say about our two months in Buenos Aires and as I’m clearly not posting in the moment, it’ll be easier to write it in topics.

San Telmo

As the oldest barrio in Buenos Aires, San Telmo is full of character, history, grit, rejuvenation and hipsters. The bus and subway service is great and it’s pretty central to the rest of Buenos Aires. Many streets are lined in cobblestone and some seriously good and colourful graffiti art adorns its walls; a juxtaposition right there. Even its subway station is covered in creative mosaics and Arabic text.




I’ve always thought it curious how different a place seems to be when you remember how it looked and felt upon first arrival. Thinking back to the first afternoon at the crowded market and my first slightly on edge walk to yoga, it seemed different, surreal and not at all like the neighbourhood that is now up there with my ‘homes away from home’ around the world. San Telmo is where I practiced Spanish, first lived with (only) Tristan, did my weekly shopping, practiced at Buena Onda Yoga and worked as a cleaner and babysitter.

Defensa is the main street in San Telmo and on Sundays it’s closed off for a market. We only found it on Easter Sunday and thought it was a one-off, but it’s there every week in all its glory; roaming musicians and food sellers, bands on the corner, singers, puppeteers, dancers, hundreds of stalls and of course lots of tourists. By the end I felt like a real local as I’d get annoyed pushing through on my way to yoga or work! But then that’d make me happy and I remembered how lucky I am.

We lived near the corner of Independencia and Chacabuco streets and on Saturday’s until around 2pm there’s a fresh food market a couple of blocks away on Mexico St. We went every week and it was a good way for me to practice my Spanish. Even at the supermarkets, you don’t take what you want and have it weighed at the check out, but tell the staff what you’d like and they select it.

Dorrego Plaza is home to the Sunday antiques market, which at around 5pm transforms into an outdoor milonga (tango practice). The same antiques can be bought for around half the price at the indoor antiques market, which is open most days. Around the plaza and San Telmo in general, there are lots of old cafes and bars, full of wood and photos and looking like they’d been there for a hundred years (and in fact may have been).

We decided to eat out once a week and it was often to one of the many and diverse options in San Telmo. We definitely chose a good place to live! We also liked going to a cafe for either coffee and medialunas (small croissants) or to a bar for Martini Rosso with soda from one of those old spritzer jugs and free peanuts or popcorn.





One afternoon we visited El Zanjon. Originally a mansion, when yellow fever spread through the neighbourhood in the early 1870s it was abandoned and became an tenancy building, mainly for poor migrants. Tunnels were constructed to stop flooding and provide water to residents, but it was abandoned again in 1985. The current custodians revealed old tiles on the walls and discovered the tunnels after unclogging decades of rubbish. Its history identified, they decided against their plans for a restaurant and developed the building into a museum. It is definitely worth a visit. El Zanjon is privately run, has won awards and is partially funded by hiring out sections for events; it’d be a fantastic venue!