Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires has been called the Paris of South America so many times that the city has stopped listening, which is the most Buenos Aires thing about it. The bones are European — grand boulevards, wrought-iron balconies, cafés that have been pulling the same espresso for a hundred years — but the pulse is entirely its own: a city that eats at ten, argues about football like it's theology, and turns a walk home into a two-hour conversation. It's enormous and walkable at once, a place where every barrio runs at its own speed and somehow they all keep time.

It's also one of the great group cities, partly because nobody here is ever in a hurry to end the night. Dinner is a parrilla that runs past midnight; the next thing is a milonga, or a wine bar in Palermo, or a back-room peña with a guitar going. The dollar stretches a long way right now if you bring cash and change it right, which puts the long dinners and the good seats within reach for a group on mixed budgets. Come with four or six friends in spring or fall, learn to say che and dale, and let the city keep you out later than you planned. It always does.