We missed summer warmth so much, we snuck below the equator to find it over winter break 2024/2025.
Day 1: Christmas Eve in Buenos Aires, Argentina
We left NYC on the afternoon of 12/23, stopping in Dallas before taking a red-eye to Buenos Aires that arrived in the morning. We crashed for a couple hours at the hotel (Buenos Aires Marriott, which we’d booked beginning the night before) and then wandered out.
This part is going to sound fancy and definitely not our usual vacation activity but: We were invited to visit the Palacio Bosch, where the family of the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina lives (or lived; their tour was just wrapping up). I loved learning about the history of the palace (you can read more here) and even a bit about how ambassadorship works in different countries, a cool social studies lesson for the kids too.
The palace is right near the Palermo Soho neighborhood, which we found really charming and were delighted to find several shops still open, even at 5pm on Christmas Eve. We stopped in Blanca, where they had great juices, coffee, and pastries and had some chipá, which is the Argentine and slightly larger version of the Brazilian pão de queijo/cheese puff.
Predictably, my children only wanted to go to the hotel pool after that, which was at least a stunning one under a glass roof on the top floor. We had dinner at the hotel; the Christmas buffet had come recommended but we found it … passable.
Day 2: Christmas Day in Buenos Aires
Our friends arrived this morning and we took to wandering around the mostly empty city. We weaved a bit into the large park for playgrounds, passing the opera house, and more.
We had a super fun Jewish-Chinese Christmas lunch and a movie at Sheikob’s Bagels in the Palermo Soho neighborhood. We had a great meal and were also sent back to the hotel with one of their Babkatone, a delicious mash-up of a babka and panettone. Thank you for the treat!
Shaped like a little city, La Recoleta Cemetery was even cooler to visit than I expected, with uniquely designed vaults, mausoleums and graves from all sorts of famous people and former presidents.
We had dinner at Mishiguene.
Day 3: Buenos Aires
More wandering, more playgrounds, and we stopped into El Ateneo Grand Splendid, an eye-popping bookshop in an old theater. Don’t miss the El Gran Gomero (Gomero de la Recoleta), a massive rubber tree thought to have been planted in the late 18th century with buttress roots like castle walls. (The photo here shows a different, equally cool, rubber tree.) We had a lunch of milanese, gambas al ajillo, heirloom tomato salads (the bliss of traveling to the land of summer, see also this Neruda poem a nice person sent me on the topic), and big fat batons of french fries at El Preferido de Palermo, a sunny restaurant from Pablo Rivero, the restaurateur who owns Don Julio. Definitely reserve ahead of time, as early as you can. Gelato from the highly recommended Rapanui (Palermo location) did not disappoint.
Day 4: Buenos Aires
We headed to the Mercado de San Telmo/San Telmo Market and fell in love with empanadas at El Hornero. They were absolutely perfect. Wandered over to buy soccer (sorry, football) gear at La Bombonera then to La Boca, the colorful neighborhood where tango is said to have originated. We had dinner at the famous Don Julio (very good but, as you know, very expensive. There are lots of excellent steakhouses in BA to choose from).
Day 5: Buenos Aires to Montevideo, Uruguay
I had hoped to book a tour of the Teatro Colón but waited too long and it was all filled up. We had lunch at Pizzería Güerrín before packing up to head to the Buquebus Ferry to Montevideo. It was an easy and fairly smooth way to get from city to city, however, getting off the ferry and getting luggage took a while and we nearly missed our dinner at Manzanar Restaurant. I’m glad we didn’t, because it was excellent. We stayed at the cute Hotel Montevideo.
Day 6: Montevideo
We walked through the Tristán Narvaja street market that runs on Sundays — so busy and tightly packed but really fun and energetic. I really liked the architecture and the low ornate buildings in Montevideo so it was fun to walk around. We had lunch at El Palenque, a well-known parilla, then walked around some more before my kids (unsurprisingly) required a visit to the hotel’s pool. We had dinner at Garcia restaurant, which had been recommended by our hotel.
Day 7: Montevideo
We got some pastries at Bertha before taking a walk by the water and the famous Montevideo sign. We had some coffee and juices at Escaramuza, a sweet bookstore with an even more charming cafe in the back. We walked through the Montevideo Metropolitan Cathedral and by the Teatro Solis before having lunch at Jacinto, one of my favorite meals of our trip. We realized that we were halfway through Hanukkah and the kids had yet to have sufganiyot/doughnuts (we decided that the fries/papas fritas we ordered at every meal for the kids counted for latkes) and navigated to a nearby Donut City. I actually loved my cinnamon-sugar doughnut although the kids unsurprisingly went for gooey dulce de leche-filled wonders.
Day 8: New Year’s Eve/Garzón
We got our rental cars and left Montevideo, stopping first at Paulo Boulangerie for excellent croissants for the road. We swung through Punta del Este but it was — perhaps unsurprisingly for a major holiday in a summer beach town — mobbed. We had lunch at La Marea, then continued on to Garzón. Why Garzón? I’m so glad you asked! We’d hoped to stay in either Punta del Este or José Ignacio but it was impossible to find an AirBnb or even hotel for the two nights we needed. (Needless to say: plan much earlier than we did. I might even start looking one year out if it’s Christmas/New Year’s week.) Rather desperate, we ended up finding a massive, gorgeous house in the middle of nowhere (truly, miles and miles on dirt roads only surrounded by cows, horses, and sheep) we used as our base.
We’d been super excited to have our New Year’s Eve dinner at the nearby Restaurante Garzón from Francis Mallman, who I’ve been obsessed with since watching his Chef’s Table episode in 2015. (I talk about it here!) Unfortunately, we hadn’t realized that the meal would be price-fixed including a wine pairing at $480 (yes, US dollars) per person and only half of that for the kids, which was simply not tenable and we had to cancel. Instead, we shopped for groceries and grilled shrimp and steak at the house, made tomato salads, spaghetti aglio e olio (the unsung hero of vacation house cooking), and gin-and-tonics.
Day 9: New Year’s Day/Garzón
We spent a few hours on the silky beach in José Ignacio and then had the terrific luck of landing a table at La Huella for lunch. We really loved the food and the vibe there. Scraping up the groceries we could find at the little beach grocery stores, we made dinner at the house again (grilled hot dogs, heh, and pasta carbonara, which I cannot believe this website doesn’t have a recipe for — someone should have a talk with me about correcting this).
Day 10: Garzón
While Restaurante Garzón had kindly offered to reschedule our meal for today when we had to cancel on New Year’s Eve, we hadn’t been sure whether we wanted to spend the day at the beach. Of course we regretted not taking them up on it when we decided to see if we could just walk in for a lunch table (we could not) at the last minute. We did a little shopping in the area, however, buying olive oil and gifts. We headed back to José Ignacio and randomly stumbled into a restaurant called The Shelter (La Susana would have been our first choice) for lunch and really enjoyed it, and their empanadas too. We did a little more shopping and headed to the Montevideo airport for our late flight home.
A few notes:
This was a tightly scheduled trip because the kids’ winter break is short and because there were a few holidays in which little was open but we did our best. If I was planning this a second time, I’d try to schedule more cultural stuff in Buenos Aires, such as a tango performance/lesson, perhaps an opera or opera tour, and maybe even a cooking lesson: