Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires was founded twice and has been insisting ever since. They call her the Paris of the South for the boulevards and the domes, but the soul is something else: a port city that reads a great deal, eats late and argues about everything — football, politics, whether tango is danced or listened to. There are more bookstores per person than anywhere on Earth, and an opera house, the Colón, where even the silence has acoustics.

The sensible traveller divides her like this: San Telmo for the Sunday fair and its cobblestones; Palermo for the table — the parrilla is liturgy and the pizza a Genoese inheritance —; La Boca early, for the color and for Caminito before the buses; and Recoleta to learn that even death can be an elegant neighborhood. The river is always there, so wide it looks like sea, so calm it is hardly ever looked at.

The Guide's honesty: export tango is bought on Corrientes, but the real thing is danced in neighborhood milongas — arrive late and watch first —; the tip is ten percent and cash still commands; and in January the whole city moves to the coast: if you come looking for porteños, don't come when they're gone.