Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is easily my favorite major city so far in South America, and along with Cusco and San Pedro, one of my favorite locations.  I tend to compare cities to New York, in the sense that in New York you can find something everywhere.  There's few places that feel like you're not in a city (such as the Sunset district of SF).

Buenos Aires, and Argentina in general, has a large Italian population and Italian influence (probably adding to the New York feel).  I can identify older people's Italian accents, despite largely not speaking Spanish.  Incidentally, I've found the most English speakers here compared to the other major cities (though I hear Lima has more than what I experienced), but the surprising part is that they don't have strong accents when speaking English (to me) even if they only speak a little more than I speak Spanish.

Food here is all Italian.  I really struggled to find a place that didn't serve pizza and pasta.  I eventually gave in.

Florida street has all of the cambio places, and as always trading money on the black market is the best way to go.  Some locals are sometimes willing to buy your dollars; I met an Armenian (from Turkey) who was able to trade dollars with locals in an Armenian church for 13 instead of the black market's 12.50 rate.

Buenos Aires is home to the Caminito La Boca area, where houses were painted wildly different colors by the first Italian settlers.  Seeing pictures of this in the video Where the Hell is Matt 2008 (go watch it) was the first inspiration I had to come to South America and specifically Buenos Aires.  It did not disappoint.