Following our relaxing time in Bariloche we caught the bus to Buenos Aries, another long bus journey of around 22 hours. We arrived mid-morning and all we could muster ourselves to do on arrival was drag ourselves around a few nearby squares (including the main Plaza de Mayo) and walking up the main shopping street. After this we crashed in our 8 person dorm desperate for some sleep. We had scheduled 6 days in Buenos Aries and were not in any rush whatsoever. Over the next few days we leisurely visited the top attractions in Buenos Aries whilst at the same time trying to keep an eye on our budget. This meant that we had to be careful about eating in restaurants and partying and also put paid to our plans to do a day trip to Uruguay.

Buenos Aries is a huge city and has lots of high quality churches, museums, monuments and art galleries. Using the easy metro system we visited, Casa Rosada and its museum, the city museum, the Church of San Francisco, the cathedral, the museo de Bellas Artes, the centro cultural recoleta and the Recoleta cemetary. Gemma is a big fan of Eva Peron (well the musical Evita!) and she was in her element here. There was Plaza Evita with its statue of Evita, the Eva Peron Museum and we also visited Evita´s grave.

The Copa America also began whilst we were in Buenos Aries, which was great news for Craig, but not such great news for Gemma. We watched the opening game in our hostel, but a lucky 1-1 draw for the home nation was not well received. Craig could have gone to the game (played in La Plata about 70 miles away) but the 100 quid price tag put him off. The poor game we watched made the decision not to go look like the right one.

Buenos Aries is a fascinating city, very much in the style of Madrid (apparently as neither of us has been) but we also saw similarities with Paris and London. There are lots of areas (or barrios) to the city that have their own identities. We especially enjoyed the high end shops and museums in Recoleta, the squares, monuments and massive streets of Centro and the antique shops and flea markets of Defensa in San Telmo.

As usual for Argentina the food in Buenos Aries was great. We found a lovely steak house and a couple of really good pizza places, where we were able to wash dinner down with lots of Argentinian Malbec. The only exception was a trip to Burger King who were advertising a 5 stacked burger with 5 burgers, 5 slices of cheese and a layer of bacon which Gemma was adamant she would try. We both managed to finish our burgers (despite being little more than a wall of meat and cheese) but it was a hollow victory as we felt like we´d abused our bodies in doing so.

Night life in Buenos Aries (and Argentina in general) starts really late, people start going out around 11pm and clubs only get busy after 1am. Arriving in the city tired, it took us a few days to get into the swing of things and it was only after the invention of the ´disco nap´ between 8pm and 10pm that we were fully able to enjoy nights out. We made it to a nightclub called Bahrain which was pleasant enough save that it played dreadful trance music in both of its rooms. We also went to a local live music venue called Plasma, where a band (no vocalist which was strange) rocked the evening. We had a great time, but 4 bottles of red wine between us was more than enough to ensure that we suffered the next day.