Cordoba
Catedral de Córdoba Plaza San Martin
Time spent: 28 days; 6 Sept 2025 - 4 Oct 2025
Elevation: 394 ft (120m)
Currency: Argentine Peso
Lodging Cost: $15.99 per night; Airbnb
Author's note: I try to list all costs on this site in both local currency and US dollars. Because Argentina has experienced hyperinflation over the last few years, these numbers may not accurately reflect current costs at the time of reading.
Arriving in Cordoba
I didn't really research anything about Cordoba before I came. I just looked at a map, saw three major cities lined up across Argentina, and thought, "Hey, it would be cool to take a bus all the way across the continent."
In hindsight, that was probably a mistake. This was one of my least favorite stops on my whole journey so far. To make it worse, it was sandwiched right between two cities I loved. If I had not spent a month here, I could have spent an extra two weeks in both Buenos Aires and Mendoza.
I had heard Cordoba was a big college town, so I assumed there would be plenty to do. While it does have a busy nightlife scene, it leans much more toward loud nightclubs than relaxed bars, which is not really my thing.
The city itself does not get many international tourists, but the surrounding region is pretty popular for domestic travel thanks to nearby mountain ranges and alpine-style towns.
The only day trip that looked remotely interesting to me was Villa General Belgrano. It is a town founded by German immigrants, famous for its wooden alpine architecture and a huge Oktoberfest celebration, which I believe is the biggest beer festival in South America. I was pretty disappointed when I realized I had just missed it.
Iglesia del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús
Plaza del Bicentenario
Nueva Cordoba: The Heart of the City
If you do decide to come here, this is probably the area you will end up staying, or at least where you should end up staying. This is near the college and the most culturally vibrant area in town.
There are some upscale restaurants, but the biggest attraction is a huge park, or maybe I should say a bunch of little parks that are all touching. I guess they just had a bunch of people they wanted to name stuff after.
The center ring of this is Plaza Espana, and streets branch out in eight different directions from here. It is a pretty cool layout.
I do have to warn you about Plaza del Bicentenario right next to Plaza Espana. This park/art installation has 201 rings. 200 of the rings are marked with a year in Argentina's history, and the 201st ring symbolizes the country's future. It is kind of cool.
Now for the warning: I am not being hyperbolic or negative, but the place constantly smells like piss. I do not know if it is drunk college kids or homeless people, as I didn't really see many of either, but every time I walked through, the smell was right there. It actually kinda baffled me. It just feels like you would need an insane amount of piss to keep an open-air space that size smelling like that around the clock.
A Photo Tour of Cordoba
For Cordoba, I think the best I can do is just show the photos with detailed captions. I feel like it is really mailing it in when trying to make a decent travel website, but damn, I just do not have that much to make a long write up of the place. It is like spending a month in Columbus, Ohio. It is fine to live there, but I just do not really know why you would visit as a tourist.
Monumento a los Heroes de Malvinas: A memorial to the veterans of the 1982 Falklands War. The whole situation was embarrassing for Argentina, but the military humiliation did end up collapsing the dictatorship in power at the time. The leaders who started the war are widely condemned as reckless criminals, but the 600+ soldiers who died are treated with immense respect as political pawns.
Catedral de Cordoba and Plaza San Martin: Completed in 1787 (after almost 200 years), this is the oldest operating church in Argentina and one of the oldest in South America. This is zero point for what is probably the closest thing Cordoba has to a tourist hub. From here, there are several blocks of car-free roads that lead to food, shopping, and museums.
Some of the streets around Plaza San Martin. A lot of the historic architecture remains.
Chipa and sandwich de miga: Glorious little balls of flour and cheese. These sandwiches had no business being that damn good. It is just a ham and cheese sandwich smashed flat with the crust cut off. Guess what, mom? When I was doing this to my sandwiches as a kid, I was not playing with my food, I was making a popular Argentine dish.
Paseo de las Artes: This is a good-sized night market that runs on the weekends selling mostly handmade goods. Lots of leather (cowboy kind, not the sexy kind) and tons of yerba mate accessories to make your drinking experience more fashionable. There are food vendors, but not nearly as many as I would have expected.
Ballsy little pigeon walks over and asked: You done with that?
La Canada: Definitely needs more water to pull off the whole canal look, but the stone walls and tree-lined walkways give it a neat European feel.
Parque Sarmiento: The biggest park in the area. Lots of trails for jogging.
Final Thoughts on Cordoba
I can imagine you know where this is going.
Now, I do not hate the town at all. It is not like I ran into all kinds of trouble or that it has bad infrastructure. It is nothing like that. The city does not have a lot of negatives, it just does not have a lot of positives. Cordoba is the saltine cracker of cities.
Honestly, this place did give me a break and kind of reminded me of the life I used to live: going to the grocery store, watching TV in the evenings. I finally jumped on the bandwagon and started playing Minecraft here, albeit probably about 10 years late.
Anyways, when the time came, I was ready to go.
From here, I took an overnight bus to my favorite city in Argentina: Mendoza.
Faro del Bicentenario: The third tallest structure in the city at 262 ft (80 m) tall. It was inaugurated in 2011 to celebrate Argentina's bicentennial.