Porteños - or 'people of the port' as the residents of Buenos Aires are known - are said to be Italian people that speak Spanish, take most of their cultural references from North America and want to be English. It's considered no surprise that with such multiple personalities 90% of them see therapists. Buenos Aires had a massive influx of immigrants from Italy and Spain in the 1880s, and feels more European than South American. It's one of biggest tourism destinations on the continent. We were very excited to be spending 10 days here…

We arrived into the bus station at 7am in the morning, passing through the historic streets and feeling very old watching youngsters on their way home from clubbing the previous night. Unfortunately I was sick again on the day we arrived, and spent most of the day sleeping while Jon went out to explore. I think I am allergic to long distance bus travel as every time we do a long journey I am ill. Perhaps it's the stigma that upsets me - I would never travel on a megabus in the UK. I'm not sure if it was the sickness, or just a touch of homesickness, but i was VERY excited that some people in our hostel had brought that week's edition of OK magazine with them from the UK. For two months I haven't known what has been going on in Kerry Katona's love life, and whether or not Jordan and Peter Andre are speaking. So I stole it from the cleaners bin. But Jon's law breaking later in the week was much worse, and I admit g I have a D list celebrity gossip addiction - admitting you have a problem is the first step to finding a cure.

Luckily I was soon feeling a bit better - 20 hours of sleep will tend to do that to a person - and we took the now customary free walking tour to get an overview of the city. The guide for this tour was still a bit shouty but the group was a lot larger and she seemed to be doing it in an enthusiastic rather than angry way, so we gave her the benefit of the doubt. Unlike in Santiago no one left before then end, which was nice. The tour took in most of the centre of Buenos Aires (BA), a mainly business district which is busy during the day, but dead at night. We were shown the national congress building, as well as the alternative national congress where most politicians moved their offices during the military dictatorship of the 1970s. We also saw historic coffee shops - Porteños love to spend hours hanging out and gossiping over a cup of coffee, and ended the tour at Casa Rosada (the pink house) where the Argentine President has their office. We also got shown 'the widest avenue in the world'. Except it isn't, and hasn't been for about 50 years and is in fact about 100m narrower than the actual widest in Brazillia. But it's symptomatic of the attidude in Argentina - everything has to be the biggest and best on the continent.

There was so much to see, do, and eat in BA that I can't fit it all in one entry, but we….

· Took the obligatory free walking tour;

· Went inside the Case Rosada and went to the Evita Muesum (separate blog);

· Visited La Caminera and La Boca;

· Visited the San Telmo antiques and craft market;

· Took a Bike Tour with Biking Buenos Aires;

· Spent an afternoon looking at street art and graffiti with graffitimundo.com (separate blog and album); and

· Take a stadium tour at River Plate and Boca Juniors and go to a football game (separate blog and album).

We also factored in lots of chilling out / hanging out time, and watching the Super Bowl as for once we were in virtually the same time zone and didn't have to get up early the next morning…

As if a busy week and a half in Buenos Aires wasn't enough, we also managed to fit in a day trip to Urugary. Jon was adamant he has read really good things about Urugary being the new Argentina and really wanted to go. I thought he just wanted the passport stamp, but having been there for the day I am inclined to agree with him and wish we could've spent more time in this beautiful country. We went to Colonia for the day, which is about an hour on catamaran from Buenos Aires. Colonia is a UNESCO historical site - I must check if anywhere in the UK is a UNESCO site. It seems here everything proudly proclaims that it has the UNESCO stamp of approval but I can't think of anything that advertises it in quite the same way at home. It changed hands between the Spanish and Portuguese 9 times between 1680 and 1822 which caused the town to develop with a hotch potch of buildings in different styles - flat roofs (Spanish style) and tiled roofs (Portuguese style). This makes it a nice place to spend a few hours.

But even better that the history and architecture, in Colonia they rent golf buggies to tourists to travel round in. Unfortunately you have to have a driving license to hire a golf buggy and in a fit of efficiency I had separated the passports from Jon's driving license for the first time in 10 weeks. So we found ourselves on pushbikes heading out of town to look at beaches and an old tourist complex about 5km away. The Uruguarians wanted to attract tourists to Colonia so built a luxury hotel complex out of town. They figured Spanish speaking tourists would be the easiest to attract so went out and did some market research and decided to build a bull ring in the complex as Spanish people like that a lot. Unfortunately 5 years later bull fighting was banned in Uruguay. Then they put a casino in the hotel but the Argentinian government weren't happy about the Argentines spending their gambling money in Uruguay (rather than Argentina) so they put up the boat taxes to make it prohibitively expensive to travel. The tourist complex and bull ring are in ruins - and now attract tourists from all over the world.

The thing about ruined bullrings though is that whilst they are interesting enough from the outside, you really want to go and see inside it. The Uruguarian tourist department has worked its usual magic and erected a big fence around the outside so you can't go in. But the Uruguarian people, being South American, weren't putting up with that rule and cut holes in it. We were feeling brave (as some other people had just climbed through the holes) and decided to go and have a look when someone drove past and shouted at us that it was illegal. So we hatched a cunning plan. I would stand outside with the bikes and Jon would go in. That way if the police came I would pretend he had gone to the shop, not trespassed into the Bullring. It was foolproof. And thus began - and ended - Jon's new career as a criminal. No one came, no one even shouted at us this time and he got some good photos. The adrenaline was still pumping when we got back to town so we had to sit down and have a celebratory ice cream - we had got one over the establishment. Go us!

On our last night in BA we finally made it to a Tango Show. We knew BA is synonymous with Tango, so couldn't leave without seeing some, but there is a vast range on offer and we didn't really know where to start. I asked in the travel agency for some non touristy tango, but the sales person laughed in our face. Apparently Tango show are all touristy, you just have to find one that's right for the type of tourist you are. So I'm not quite sure how Jon and I found ourselves on a minibus with four sixty year olds. Most tango shows have a free lesson beforehand, and quite coincidentally, Jon had picked the only show without one. Perhaps that's why - we had chosen a Tango show for the immobile tourist.

Still, the show was quite good, a bit like watching a themed episode of Strictly Come Dancing, but without Robbie Savage's magnificent chest. The unlimited free wine made up for it a bit as well. Apparently, the Tango used to be a male only dance, with it's origins in fencing and duelling. It was developed in the ports of Buenos Aires and was a working class dance until someone in Paris got hold of it and decided to make it fashionable. In recent years it has made a come back in BA, and you can't move for milongas (dance halls) or shops selling Tango Shoes in the south of the city.

After the Tango, we went to the bar opposite our hostel to toast our last night in BA. Then we met an Irish couple who had come to the football game with us and toasted their time in BA. Then we met two random Argentinians and toasted the fact that one of them had played for Boca Juniors and was at the same football game as us earlier in the week. Then we found out it was one of their birthdays so we travelled to a hip bar on the other side of town to toast that. Finally we ran out of things to toast and eventually made it back to the hostel at 4am. Then we woke up - it was 8am and our flight to Iguazu was 75 minutes later from the domestic airport on the other side of town. I'm not sure if you remember the fabulous opening scene of the classic film 'Four Weddings and a Funeral', but we re-enacted it rather well that morning. Turns out if you act like a South American and walk straight to the front of the check in queue you can board a domestic flight in Argentina less that 30 minutes before they leave…

This week we...

STAYED

· At Hostel America Sur in San Telmo. It was a bit like a hostel crossed with a nice modern Travelodge (not the one in Reading) with a good kitchen and common area. The male staff behind reception were generally more helpful than the females, all of whom had a bit of an attitude, especially when it came to paying the bill.

ATE

· Steak in Puerto Madero. Puerto Madero is BA's version of Canary Wharf, and where we were looked so much like it I thought we were in Bar 38 and couldn't understand where the FSA building had gone. We ate at Cabana Las Lilles who grow their own cows especially to kill them and make good steak. And good steak it was too, made even better by the complimentary bottle of Lemoncello that came afterwards. And because we asked so nicely they gave us a second one.

· Steak at Don Julio in Palermo. A more traditional neighbourhood steak house which had a wine bible, advised on best selection of Malbec and then let us draw on the wine bottle afterwards before adding it to the wall of wine bottles.

· Steak at Gran Parilla Del Plata in San Telmo. This was a lunchtime pre-football game steak and was very nice even though they did give our order to someone else first. Best side dish (baked potato with bacon and philadephia)

· The BEST ice cream in BA at Nonna Biancos in San Telmo. The ice cream is made and served by an old woman and her even older mother. Bellisimo.

· The second best ice cream in BA from Freddos (a chain).

· When we weren't eating steak and ice cream we ate in our hostel - mostly pasta in tomato sauce. Travelling is a bit like being a student again.

LEARNT

· There are too many good steak restaurants, and too little time.

· You never know when you might need your driving license.

· You don't really need a starter before steak. Nor do you need to order mulitiple side dishes.

· Don't give taxi drivers 100 peso notes. They won't change them and if you are unlucky (like we were) they will give you a different, fake 100 peso note back which you won't be able to do anything with.

· It does not pay to go out and celebrate your last night in a city, even if it seems like a tremendous idea at the time.