Public Transportation & The Villa Devoto & Villa Crespo Barrios in Buenos Aires: Nights 5 &a

Nights out brought me to two of Buenos Aires' many neighborhoods. This place is huge.

Villa Devoto: This neighborhood held a restaurant that was a Tinder date suggestion. The plan was to go to Tiempo de Sabores, a wine bar which looked very charming, but it closed at 8 and we were meeting at 9:30. Dinner here is very late. Most spots don't open until 8 or later, so clearly this Tiempo de Sabores is a daytime restaurant. Nevermind, because the neighborhood of Villa Devoto is lovely and I was happy to see it. With no high rise buildings, it feels more like a suburb, it's a bit quieter than the city, and there are plenty of coffee shops and restaurants. I want to say it's like the New Canaan, Connecticut of Buenos Aires. It is quite far from the downtown and where I am staying, so I would never have ventured that far had Tinder date not suggested it. If I come again to Buenos Aires, I will definitely spend an afternoon out there.

We ended up going to Alicia in Devoto, which was chic and tasty.

The trip to Villa Devoto was also fun because it involved two subways and an above ground train. The public transportation here is awesome. Well, the buses and subways here are awesome. The train is OK.

The subways have great musicians, like New York, but many play instruments I've never seen in New York, like the Saatva Drum (skip to the middle of the video):

And the Bombo Legüero Drum and Didjeridoo (I think?):

The "subtes," metro buses, and trains are also super cheap (under $2 for a re-chargeable card. I've put about $3 on it and taken 8 trips I think, a few on each mode. No re-charge necessary yet!). You can buy these cards on almost every other city block, not just in stations, and re-charge them in even more locations. The subtes are clean. AND many of them have beautiful graffiti. Each bus line has its own unique, quirky color scheme and looks kind of vintage, and I think they are beautiful on the outside (nothing special on the inside). I need to take more pictures of them!

If the one I took is like the rest, then the Buenos Aires train-trains are fine, and even have food stations with hot dogs and things, but leave something to be desired.

This was the view across from the station that took me from Palermo to Devoto:

Villa Crespo: Last night, I went with a friend of a friend who happens to be in Buenos Aires to the Villa Crespo area, which I'd say is where the young nightlife scene is. Wine bars, speakeasies, beer pubs, cocktail bars, night clubs, trendy hostels - all here, concentrated pretty close together. It's a fun spot, and it's basically downtown. We planned on going to Nicky Sushi, which has a New York-themed speakeasy that's supposed to be cool inside of it.

I headed over early and got a beer at Siberia - Refugio Cervecero, which has a happy hour from 6-8 every night: craft pints for 55 pesos which is like $3.50. Nicky Sushi was booked, which was fine by me because I was 99% sure it was going to be an overpriced tourist trap and I've talked about my fish rule: don't eat fish when traveling in developing nations. So we got steak and wine at some random spot! It looked like nothing special but it was delicious. I don't think you can get bad steak in Argentina, can you? It is so flavorful. Then we walked around, passing a rowdy group at a hostel doing shots, and grabbed a beer outside at a crowded bar.

I have a GoFundMe!

#VillaDevoto #VillaCrespo #BuenosAires #AliciaDevoto #BuenosAirespublictranspo #SiberiaRefugioCervecero #NickySushi