welcome to argentina today we're in the city of buenos aires the largest city in
the capital of argentina with about 15 million people in its metropolitan area
there's lots of things to see and do yeah and today we are going to be exploring the
city and checking out all of the coolest spots and we set ourselves a budget to do
so so we've got a hundred dollars to use for the day but because we are budget travelers
we're actually going to manage to do it on 50 and we're going to show you how
all right so we have just arrived at florida street or what the locals call florida street
i think i was saying that right and florida street is a really popular
sort of tourist area in the city lots of great shopping and restaurants and bars
what it's also known for is cambio mico's gonna tell you a little bit more about that
the best way to get the most out of your money in argentina is to not pay anything in credit card
or debit card or anything online you're going to want to use cash so you come to florida street and
you're going to come back here and you're going to hear a lot of people say cambio.
Cambio
loosely translates into exchange argentina right now is experiencing
crisis and inflation that means there's a large demand for stable currencies like euros pounds
and especially us dollars so what you want to do is come here with something like 50 us dollars and
exchange it because there's not only an official rate that you would get at the bank for exchanging
us dollars there's also something called the blue rate or the black market rate so yesterday
we came to florida street and usually with 50 us dollars we're able to normally get around 5 000
argentinian pesos using the official rate but since we're using the unofficial blue
market rate we're able to get 10 500 pesos so pretty much double what you would get
for 50 and that is how today we're gonna spend 50 us dollars at the value of 100.
okay now that we are caffeinated i can tell you a little bit about the other expenses we've already
encouraged today so the first is breakfast if you've seen our 100 in istanbul vlog you'll know
that we typically do cereal for breakfast which is precisely what we did this morning so that cost us
uh just 100 pesos for the two of us to have breakfast this morning the next expense that
we've already heard is of course coffee a good coffee here in argentina comes at the price of 800
pesos which for us is absolutely worth it but it might not be something that you want to splurge on
and the last expense that we've already incurred this morning just by waking up was the price
of our accommodation so our airbnb right now is costing us three thousand one hundred and fifty
pesos per night and we are going to actually show you a little tour of that that we took a video of
a couple of days ago welcome to our airbnb come on in beginning of our little apartment
has our dining room table and then you enter the main living space which has a queen size bed
you can see a small couch coffee table choose her lounging chairs desk dresser tv this very
useful i don't know is it like oh it's decorative are we supposed to like change binding to not sure
i don't know the kitchen and i say this is where this building really shows its age i think
but it works for us it's got enough couple of burners an oven coffee pot microwave full-size
fridge back here hot water even and then there's this guy's a more counter space
a toilet sink and it's actually got like a full-size bathtub and the last thing i
want to show you is just outside this is our view so i think that wraps up our airbnb tour
um so this is what 15 us can get you here in the city center of buenos aires
so while you are watching that airbnb tour we are making our way here to recoleta cemetery
and if you google search what to do in buenos aires this almost always comes off
as the number one thing to do here which mico thinks is super weird to have a cemetery come
up as like the best thing to do in the city but i think it's amazing this place is so beautiful
the reason it's like so beautiful in here is because this really is the cemetery first or
the elite here in buenos aires they of course had to compete with one another
for the biggest grandest most incredible mausoleum for their families to be buried in for perpetuity
so they are just like they're so intense these things some of these are so humongous and they're
really beautiful they've got lots of like granite and marble and all sorts of fancy things on them
okay this has to be one of the biggest ones
superflex superflex
now that is a big flex so this is the mausoleum of eva peron and her being buried here is one of the
main reasons that this cemetery is considered one of the biggest attractions here in buenos aires
she was an incredibly important political figure here in argentina in the 40s and 50s before
her very untimely death at the age of 33 from cervical cancer but her and her husband began
a movement that is now sort of known as a political ideology called peronism the
peronist movement and ideology that still exists today is still really controversial
but people come as you can see and they provide flowers for her grave and continue to keep up
the mausoleum that her and her family have here
this place is like a maze but like a really pretty maze it really is you get really lost in here
okay this is so cool this window is broken and so you can like see into one of the
basements of one of these muscles it's like three stories of caskets that was very cool
last piece information to share with you about the cemetery before we catch an uber to our
next destination is that it is completely free to enter and walk around as we have just done
so nicole is just grabbing the uber now it's very important though that if you use an uber make sure
you select the option which lets you pay in cash in person once again you don't want to use your
credit card or debit card or anything online for any reason you always want to pay in cash
we're in la boca very vibrant and colorful already so the boca is um like sort of a revived
neighborhood and i guess one of the reasons that it is so incredibly colorful and gorgeous
is because originally the people that worked here were like really in the
in sort of industrial settings here in buenos aires and so they had lots of like like steel
like metal and things like that as part of their work as well as paint so they ended up
painting the houses and then now it's sort of been revived um in this way and there was an
artist who was part of the revival and painted all the houses again and now it is beautiful
so caminito street is like the main street here in la boca but a couple of tips if you
are coming here they say it is not a safe place to be after dark and if you do come to the boca
you want to kind of stick to camenito street this is really like the tourist space and this
is what's supposed to be fairly safe they also say you don't even want to actually
walk here from the city center that's not a great option in terms of safety either
so you do want to take an uber or something like that
so here in la boca it's also not uncommon to see
dancers in the streets just doing the tango so that was like a little nice show
at a restaurant but you can certainly see people just dancing right on the streets
all right let's go
okay so we came to i think the most budget-friendly option for food here
and we really want empanadas and empenadas are huge in argentina we have had some while we've
been here and they are incredible so i really wanted a couple this morning or this afternoon
for lunch so moving on like this little home wall we're the other ones here it's perfect
okay so we got the empanadas this is the carne i think which is just a meat based
that's good it's fresh it's like homemade well it's right there it's gonna get pretty homemade
that is delicious the other one is ham and cheese
ham and cheese so i think our meal here with a pop and a tip is going to be like 700 pesos
um but just to give you like an idea of if you ate at one of the restaurants here i think like
the lowest cost for a dish that we saw in one of those restaurants was like a thousand pesos
between one thousand two thousand pesos per dish so this is definitely the way to go if you're on
a budget um but obviously the restaurants are beautiful it that's something you want to do.
so we had ordered an uber and it was supposed to be there in 15 minutes and 27 minutes later
it was still apparently seven minutes away and he hadn't moved in ages so we've canceled that
and uh we have heard that that's an issue here using uber in argentina is it sometimes
it'll say that like the numbers not that far away and it'll take ages to get to you
or the nearest one is really going to take a long time to get to you so probably best
to book in advance for the days that you can otherwise maybe just grab a taxi like we're
doing now should be not too much more expensive and they are all metered here
so if you've ran out of foreign currency or you just didn't bring enough cash in general
another way you could take advantage of the unofficial blue market rate for the dollar
is by sending yourself money through somewhere like western union there's a bunch of agencies
around buenos aires and also throughout argentina where basically you can just send yourself cash
through the app using something like a credit card and then pick it up at any one of the agencies
it's very easy to do and it's very quick it's probably the best option if you don't have cash
available and use the exact same rate as you would if you were to exchange it in person
okay let's go get a coffee in one of the oldest cafes in buenos aires
okay so cafe tortoni is one of the oldest cafes in buenos aires and one of the top things to do
if you come to the city everyone says you gotta come here back when there was a lot
of immigrants coming to argentina and people were living in settlement houses there's lots
and lots of people packed into small spaces so whenever people wanted either time out of
their house or to meet with people anything like that they went to cafes because they couldn't
really do it in their homes so cafes became a really important part of argentinian culture
and continue to be really important today one of the reasons cafe tortoni is so important is
because lots of famous people also come and dine here and i think the person who kind of started
that off was albert einstein and ever since him all the famous folks flock here so although we are
not famous we came for a visit as well it's such an interesting cafe to be in because it's like
very european and parisian style it feels like we've teleported to somewhere completely different
in the world pre-covid the lineups to getting into cafe tortoni to come and have a drink were
like around the block and we just waltzed in and lots of tables are available thank you so much
look at these churros we haven't had any churros yet i'm so excited to try some
and mico what did you get it's like the cafe cabrella so it's just coffee with i think vanilla
and sugar and i don't know. dulce de leche
Oh and dulce de leche
yes that's right that's what you can see all around here i'm not sure if we've mentioned it
before but it's basically like argentine like uh almost like butterscotch they add it to lots
of different things coffee ice cream you can mix it with fruits so i got it with coffee
wow it's like it's like i'm drinking a milkshake dulce de leche on the
ends of course i'm just gonna like dip that off before it falls down my face
oh
wow
it's like spanish donut that is delicious it's quite crunchy actually
soft on the inside crunchy on the outside covered in sugar i don't think i think it is
that's filtered in there
so apparently another use for dulce de leche inside churros this is amazing i wonder
if you can like dunk it no coffee it's kind of like you know like that tim tam slam in australia
it's a churro slam churro dulce de leche slam i probably probably shouldn't
all right all right so cafe tortoni we each got a coffee of course a delicious
coffee and two churros with tip came to 1500 pesos so actually a super affordable spot
that like feels like it's like supposed to be like super swanky and like fancy all the famous people
go there but you could go there too all right we are heading to our last stop of the day but
before we get there we are walking down avenido de mayo which is the long avenue that connects
national congress to the president's house so it's a very important road but we're also passing by
what do you call what's this roads name again avenida no
oh julio de, no, nueve de julio. July 9th, its the independence day of
argentina.
that's the name of the other road that intersects here and what makes this road so special is that
it is massive it is one of the widest avenues in the world i think it runs like 14 lanes total yeah
or something like that and it takes a couple of attempts to cross it in terms of just the distance
you have to go to walk it so it is massive yeah and very busy very very busy and it should take
us down the streets of kind of central buenos aires all the way to the presidential palace
something you may notice is that the architecture here is incredibly european and we learned that
the reason for that is because there was quite the obsession in the 18 1900s with european
architecture and so they basically demolished everything that had been built even during the
colonial period when this when the spanish came and colonized argentina and so and what they
rebuilt was all of this like super european style architecture so everything here just like you feel
like you're transported to like italy or france maybe in like the 1900s it's beautiful but it
is i think it's kind of sad because i think you don't really get like a feel for like what like
argentinian architecture would look like today but it's beautiful i think in large part this is
kind of like argentinian architecture because a large number of people have roots in italy
and spain i think they say that somewhere around like 50 percent of people here have some sort of
generational tie to italy yeah i think maybe even more there were so many immigrants from italy
all right so we made it to plaza de mayo which is an important place because
we hear lots of protests happen here and i think we can see even a couple going on right now
but also it's very convenient to have a protest here because right in front
of plaza de mayo is casa rosada did i say that right i always been wrong
is where the president works out of um it's a really beautiful building but um apparently
so he doesn't live here and he lives outside of the city and the guy gets helicoptered to
work every day i think that's like for all all presidents here in buenos aires and argentina
how cool is that helicopter ride to work every day it really reminds me of all of the uh the pink
buildings we saw in yerevan armenia it's gorgeous but anyways i'm starving let's go get some dinner
argentina style
amazing
argentina is like a huge me lover they rank second in the world for the most
beef consumed in a year i think it's an average like 55 kilos or 120 pounds of beef per person
per year and buenos aires is famous for their steak houses and grills so the place we chose
to eat dinner tonight um is actually more like a local spot from what we understand
which also makes it on the more affordable side which is great for our budget today
you can see behind me it looks pretty empty but that's because people here in argentina eat way
later than what what we are used to so it's seven o'clock it's like dead in here there's
only a few tables full but come eleven o'clock this place will probably be packed with people
so we're playing the beef ribs because there's lots and this looks amazing
we've got a side of smashed pumpkin it's so soft
oh that looks so good
wow that's really flavorful oh my gosh maybe we shouldn't split well the question we all
want to know is it as good as alberta beef because if you saw our video in
nordegg in canada and where we're from in canada is like known for its alberta beef so is this good
i kind of want to say alberta beef is still on top but this is a close second we might be biased
um i don't know i think that this one for me that's really good i think that would compare
to alberta beef it's tasty it's very tasty it's because there's um there's quite a lot
of fat on it so it's really flavorful that is delicious argentina knows how to do beef
all right we've made it to plaza dorrego which is kind of like a bumpin square here in the
san telmo district we grabbed ourselves some ice cream because i think we had a couple of dollars
left in our budget so we got ourselves a bunch of dulce de leche it's they're all it's like three
different flavors in here but you can't tell it just looks the same it looks amazing i've
had to eat some already because it is melting despite the fact that there's no sun anymore
i think we hit our budget so it's really important we want to emphasize again that
taking cash to argentina and exchanging here like with the cameos like we talked about earlier today
is 100 worth it we hope you've enjoyed coming along and exploring buenos aires with us today
on a budget we hope it's been informative you've learned a little bit along the way and uh we're
gonna leave you here so i think we are going to catch you next one thanks for watching we can
explore the city and make a hundred dollars nope excellent job nicole, excellent job
oh my god i just broke the chair
you weren't kidding when you said this place was old
that guys got a bed
how many immigrants from italy so
yeah that's it so so that's it so that's all i got