What's happening in Buenos Aires this week?

Tuesday through Thursday is when Buenos Aires feels most like a place people live. Merienda, the snack that falls between lunch and a very late dinner, runs around 5pm or 6pm: medialunas (small sweet croissants sticky with syrup) and a café con leche. Café Tortoni on Avenida de Mayo is the famous choice, but the queue outside is usually 30 minutes, while Las Violetas in Almagro serves the same thing under stained glass with no line most weekdays. Dinner starts after 9:30pm, and if you show up at a parrilla in Palermo at 8pm the dining room will be empty and you'll smell quebracho charcoal that's still heating up. Let that clock work for you against jet lag: most overnight flights land at Ezeiza in the morning, so sleep from 2pm to 5pm and eat at 10pm with everyone else. Monday has a catch. The National Museum of Fine Arts on Avenida del Libertador is closed, and plenty of family-run restaurants close Sunday night through Monday, but Recoleta Cemetery opens every day, which makes it the safest Monday plan. The Colón Theater also runs guided tours daily, so you can still see its horseshoe auditorium.

Weekends move outdoors. On Saturday and Sunday, an artisan fair fills Plaza Francia, right next to the Recoleta Cemetery walls, with leather, mate gourds and silver rings at prices about 20% lower than shops on Calle Florida. For the Sunday market in San Telmo, get there before noon: by 2pm the cobbles near Plaza Dorrego are shoulder to shoulder, choripán smoke hangs over the stalls, and that crush is where phones go missing. TTDI rates solo-traveler safety at 5.5/10 (see the TTDI Solo-Safety Index), so keep your phone in a front pocket on Defensa. The Feria de Mataderos is worth the 45-minute taxi ride west on Sundays, except during its midsummer break: gauchos race horses through the streets and stalls sell locro, a thick corn and pork stew, in paper bowls. Boca Juniors at La Bombonera and River Plate at the Mas Monumental play most weekends, but general tickets mostly go to club members, so a licensed match package is the realistic option for a first-timer. Skip the resale touts outside the gates.

Tango runs Tuesday through Sunday, and Monday is given over entirely to the drummers. La Viruta, in a basement on Calle Armenia in Palermo, opens beginner classes at around 8pm and keeps the floor full past 3am. For more serious dancers, Salón Canning on Avenida Scalabrini Ortiz is the right address, and the bandoneón sounds better there. Thursday to Saturday, the bars around Plaza Serrano don't fill until after midnight, so arriving at 11pm means you'll still get a table. In spring and summer, thunderstorms tend to build over the Río de la Plata in the afternoon, short and heavy, leaving corners in Palermo Soho ankle-deep in water for about an hour; a packable rain jacket handles the wind off the river far better than an umbrella. Plaza San Martín in Retiro has the thickest jacaranda canopy, and lilac petals stick to wet pavement after each spring storm. The Subte runs a shorter Sunday schedule, opening around 8am, and its gates now take contactless Visa and Mastercard. Frankfurter's latest quote put 1 USD at 1,531.52 ARS, which means a 15,000-peso empanada lunch runs about US$10.