What's a good 3-day itinerary for Buenos Aires?

Buenos Aires rewards geographic discipline. The city stretches long and narrow along the Río de la Plata, and fighting crosstown traffic between distant barrios will eat your three days. So Day 1 stays south: San Telmo and La Boca, connected by a flat thirty-minute walk along Defensa. Start at Mercado de San Telmo around 9:30am — the iron-and-glass hall from 1897 still smells like roasting coffee and cured meat at the counter stalls. Grab an empanada at El Padrino inside the market (beef or humita, about 1,500 pesos each) and a cortado at Coffee Town on the upper level. By 11am, walk south toward La Boca. Caminito takes fifteen minutes — the painted tin houses photograph well but the souvenir vendors are relentless. The real find is El Obrero, four blocks west on Agustín Caffarena, where the milanesa napolitana is thick as your fist and the walls are pinned with Boca Juniors scarves dating back decades. Lunch for two with a bottle of house Malbec runs about 25,000 pesos.

Walk back to San Telmo by mid-afternoon. The autumn light hits the cobblestones on Defensa at a low warm angle around 4pm — good for photographs, good for the antique shops that open their shutters wider as the day cools. Stop at Parque Lezama on the neighbourhood's south edge, where old men sit with thermoses of mate and the jacaranda canopy still holds a few late purple flowers in early May. Dinner at La Brigada on Estados Unidos street: the bife de chorizo arrives on a wooden board, its crust charred nearly black, the interior pink and salted. They cut it with a spoon to prove how tender the meat is. Not cheap — figure 30,000 pesos per person — but it is the best steak meal in San Telmo and one of the best in the city. Skip the more famous parrilla spots on the tourist strip of Defensa; La Brigada earns its reputation on the plate, not the foot traffic.

Day 2 moves north. Take the Subte Línea C from San Juan to Retiro — twenty minutes, about 650 pesos — then walk south into Recoleta. Hit the cemetery at 8:30am when it opens; by 10am the tour groups pack the narrow passages between mausoleums and you lose the strange quiet that makes the place work. Evita's tomb is modest compared to the Gothic crypts surrounding it, which tends to surprise people. From there, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes is two blocks east and free — the Cándido López war paintings on the second floor are worth the visit alone. By noon, walk northwest into Palermo Soho. The shift is immediate: wrought-iron balconies give way to street art and converted garage restaurants. Lunch at Don Julio on Guatemala street, but arrive by 12:30pm; by one o'clock the wait stretches past an hour. Order the entraña with a glass of Malbec. The meat has a mineral, almost iron-y taste that the more tourist-facing parrillas in Puerto Madero can't match.

After lunch, the Bosques de Palermo and the Rosedal are a fifteen-minute walk north — the roses peak in spring, but even in autumn the park smells of eucalyptus and damp grass, and the lake path is nearly empty on weekday afternoons. By late afternoon, circle back to Plaza Serrano in Palermo Soho for coffee at Cuervo Café, then let the neighbourhood pull you through its shop-lined side streets until dinner. Proper in Palermo Hollywood does a short weekly-changing menu in a courtyard under string lights — reserve for 9pm, which feels late but is normal here. The neighbourhood gets loud after 10pm on weekends; the bars along Honduras spill onto the sidewalk, and you'll hear cumbia competing with electronic sets from opposite corners of the same block.

Day 3 belongs to the civic centre. Start at Plaza de Mayo by 9am — the Casa Rosada's pink facade catches the morning sun, and the Madres de Plaza de Mayo information panels on the square's north side deserve a slow read. Walk west along Avenida de Mayo to Café Tortoni at number 825. Yes, it is touristy. The chocolate con churros is still dense and bitter-sweet, served under stained glass that has been there since 1858. Book a Teatro Colón guided tour for 1pm: the seven-tier horseshoe auditorium has acoustics that rival anything in Europe, and the tour runs about 8,000 pesos for fifty minutes. Afterward, grab a choripán from a street cart near the Obelisco — the sausage split and griddled, chimichurri so green it stains the bread. For the final evening, take Subte Línea D to Scalabrini Ortiz and walk to Salón Canning on Scalabrini Ortiz 1331 for a milonga. Entry runs about 5,000 pesos. You don't need to dance — watching from a corner table with Torrontés, on a wooden floor worn smooth by decades of feet, tells you more about tango than any stage show.