Day 9 - Buenos Aires - A Day at San Telmo Markets

Trip Start Jun 13, 2009

146

Trip End Jan 23, 2010

Loading Map

Map your own trip!

Map Options

Show trip route

Hide lines

Flag of Argentina Buenos Aires, Argentina
Sunday, July 5, 2009

Today we headed into the centre of Buenos Aires for the first time. We arrived at the Playa de Mayo which is surrounded by government buildings and the place where the mothers of the disappeared have regularly protested in the past. The streets were hauntingly empty. We visited the Obelisk and the infamous 20 lane avenue before circling back towards San Telmo and markets along the calle de Bolivar and calle de defensa. Along these streets seemingly was the entire population of the city and why, of course, all the other streets were empty. We navigated our way between the endless stalls of imaginative, colourful and creative craft items, paintings, musicians, street artists including a very convincing and comical statue in white, tango dancers and food stalls for what seemed about 2km, arriving at the Playa de Dorrigo. En-route we purchased a tasty snack of a perpita bread made from cheese, potato and meat, from a young couple with a basket selling their goods as they weaved their way through the stalls

Crossing Julio de 9 Aviendo, and Obelisk

. One of the sellers turned out to be an aussie from Sydney of all places and spent 6 months a year in Buenos Aires. As the clouds gathered overhead we headed for one of the less crowded streets and headed back towards our subway station via the tbd. We came upon the place where Eva Peron frequently addressed her supporters in the 1940's, we plan to come back for a visit when we have more time. We headed back to our homestay. Christie and I went for a long overdue 10km run and we retired once again after yet another wonderful home cooked meal.

Jodys Story
Today we went to the cathedral. At the cathedral there was a group of women called Mothers of the Disappeared. They were women whose children vanished when there was a bad goverment. They were a goverment that even if you said the goverment was not doing very well, they would take you away and you would never be seen again!!! After that we went exploring. We went past a 20 lane long road. Then we went to the markets. After the markets we came home. After a while of playing we had dinner, brushed our teeth and went to bed!

Niamhs Story
Today we woke up really late, but that didn't matter because it was the weekend, and we don’t have school on the weekend

A local feeding Pidgeons in San Telmo

. When we woke up it was about 9:35am. Then we had breakfast, brushed our teeth, got dressed and went to the train station. When we got off we went to the markets, except it was in the city. It was fun and boring at the same time. It was fun because we got food, a really tangy orange juice and an ocarina, a round as in a sphere, clay, hollow flute. The thing I didn’t like about the markets is we were walking all around the markets for about 3 or four hours and it got very tiring. We had a chunk of bread each with ham, goats cheese [feta cheese], rocket and tomato. After that we had pasties, mine was a chicken pasty, mmm. Then we started to go home. On the way there we saw the Mothers of the disappeared, it was very interesting and sad I thought. Then we went back on the train, hopped off the train after some time and walked the rest of the way home. Then we ate dinner, got ready for bed, got into bed and went to sleep.