Things I Will & Won't Miss About Living in Buenos Aires

I can't believe our time in Buenos Aires is almost up! There are so many things that I will miss about our time here, but also many things I'll be happy to have again once I'm back in the States. I figured I would make a comprehensive list of them for you!

Things I Will & Won't Miss About Living in Buenos Aires | The Will Miss List

Gluten Free Food

I can't even tell you how good the gluten free food is here. It is the epitome of chef's kiss. We cannot even begin to comprehend in the U.S. what they do here with gluten free food, including gluten free pastries, it is unreal! I will deeply miss this because I have a wheat allergy and it's just part of life for me. I've definitely been spoiled while I’ve lived here.

No Daylight Saving!

I absolutely love that they don't do daylight saving here. As an American, daylight saving is one of the banes of my existence. I absolutely despise it and it's so hard when you have kids. Not having to do that here was so refreshing!

The Playgrounds

We have spent so much time at playgrounds over the past 6 months and I will definitely miss the superior playgrounds they have. So many are colorful and themed and 95 percent of them are fenced in which, if you have a toddler that likes to run, you understand what a massive deal this is.

The Argentinian People

I think the people is what I'll miss the most. We have met so many incredibly kind, wonderful and sweet people. I cannot tell you the number of times people would have me cut in front of them in line in a grocery store because my kids were fussy just because they were genuinely kind. The community we became a part of while we lived here was incredible. I absolutely love the people here and I will deeply, deeply miss all of the friends we have made.

Public Transit

I can't speak for the entire country of Argentina but in Buenos Aires, the public transit is incredible. Between the buses, the above ground train, and the subway, you can get pretty much anywhere without a car. We survived 6 months without a car here and loved being able to use public transit and walk to so many places. I feel you learn a city through walking it and it definitely helped to solidify our love for the city.

Things I Will & Won't Miss About Living in Buenos Aires | The Won’t Miss List

Things Are Unnecessarily Complicated

I will not miss how complicated things are here. It's just so complicated to do a lot of things, including getting mail or using the delivery services for food. In order to get food delivered to our apartment, we had to not only have an Argentine phone number, but we needed to have our Argentine IDs, which took six weeks for us to get. We had to go to an office to get the IDs and then wait for them to be delivered to our apartment. It turns out that they actually couldn't be delivered to our apartment so we then had to go to a separate office downtown to pick up the IDs. Just unnecessarily complicated! That's just one example, but my patience was definitely tested regularly.

Economic Inconsistency

Kind of like things being complicated, there is a lot of inconsistency in goods here. The economy and government is set up in such a way that it can be very difficult to find specific things depending on the week.There were probably three weeks where we couldn't find any plain potato chips in grocery stores. Plain potato chips are one of my autistic daughters safe foods, so not being able to access them easily was hard. Also due to tariffs, it is very expensive to buy certain things. For example, something simple like a Stanley tumbler water bottle is incredibly expensive here.

Our Apartment

I will not miss the apartment we've been living in. There were a lot of issues with our specific apartment that were a pain to deal with. Remember how I said things are unnecessarily complicated? That applies here too. It was overall too small for what our family is used to. Yes, it had two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and a large living area, which was absolutely great. However, my seven year old autistic daughter is very much used to having her own room and her own space so this setup was very difficult, especially for her. Also, considering the bed that we sleep on in this apartment is two twin beds pushed together, I cannot wait to get back to my own bed.

No Amazon

Something I took for granted in the States was the luxury of having Amazon. It turns out it's incredibly expensive to ship stuff from Amazon to Argentina and if you DO ship things, there's the possibility of it not even getting to you. There is technically an Amazon site, but you have to have an Argentine phone number, an Argentine bank account or card and your Argentine ID. It was too complicated for us, so we just went without and I CANNOT wait to start ordering stuff from Amazon again once we are home!

It is definitely bittersweet leaving and we will always cherish our time here, but we are SO excited to get home to our house, city and our people.