A Buenos Aires day deep in the Palermo barrios

A Palermo café with pour-over coffee and stamped ceramic mugs. Order a flat white and medialunas with dulce de leche. Pavement tables if the sun is out; communal table inside.

The best modern art collection in Latin America — Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Lam, Tarsila. Two hours. The café on the second floor has tapas and a valid light lunch if the museum ran long.

A sixty-year-old parrilla that locals use. Ojo de bife, bondiola de cerdo, papas fritas — half the menu prices of the showcase Palermo parrillas. Cash preferred; the wine is better than the room suggests.

A 19th-century French-designed botanical garden with sculpture gardens and a glass-roofed palmhouse. Dozens of cats live among the borders, fed by neighbours for decades. Walk the main avenue slowly.

The Japanese garden a block from the botanical one. Koi ponds, a tea house, an arched bridge over a stream. Small entry fee; thirty minutes for a full loop. The koi are hand-fed by children on the bridge.

The heart of Palermo Soho. Weekend craft market spills around the central plaza. Weekday afternoons it's shops, cafés, tattoo parlours. Walk a lap of the surrounding blocks — Honduras, Gorriti, Armenia.

Enter through a flower shop to the basement speakeasy behind. One of the world's fifty best bars. Order the Principe de los Apóstoles gin with tonic. Standing room at peak; come at 19:30 for a stool.