Buenos Aires Hotels
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Visitors, tango and meat
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My brother Hjalmar and his wife Karoline came to Buenos Aires for a short five day visit. They stayed in the nice tango-oriented Mansion Dandi Royal, in the middle of the old San Telmo district. In the 19th century, San Telmo was the main residential barrio of the city and now it is mainly known for its small streets full of coffee shops, bars, pubs, antique shops and of course ... tango. I choose the Carlos Gardel hostal, two blocks away, not realy a top pick, but it fitted a bit better in my budget and as I only was there to sleep I didn´t realy mind.
Every morning started with a nice breakfast buffet at the Mansion, open from 7:00 am till 3:00 pm (!!!). Another proof that Argentinians have a slightly different day timing than us.
The rest of the days we explored the main districts of Buenos Aires, starting with the microcentro where the plaza the mayo is. As it was a thursday we saw the mothers of the plaza de mayo walking around it, as a weekly protest to get clearity about what happend to their childeren during the dirty war (1976-1983) when between 6.000 and 30.000 of Argentinians disappeared, eliminated by the military junta because they didn´t fit into their system. In 1976, one of the generals predicted, "We are going to have to kill 50,000 people: 25,000 subversives, 20,000 sympathizers, and we will make 5,000 mistakes." Lots of the victims were childeren, being taken from their subversive families and raised in military families or just killed. A bit more history can be found at the eastern end of the plaza where the Casa Rosada is, home of the federal government, but mainly known because of Peron´s speeches with Evita at his side.
After this history class it was time for a break in Cafe Tortoni, a classic cafe, where several famous tango artists have played (amongst them Carlos Gardel). With a rather disappointing caffe frappé for my brother and a great chocolate cake for me we were ready to attac the shopping area, Avenida Florida. A hughe boulevard and the only one that is traffic free. There I found the tent that will be my home for most of January and February, a 800g, one person tent of the Argentinina brand Montagne... Let´s hope and see if it will be strong enough for Patagonia!!
That night it was time for our first tango class at the mansion. Great teachers, great fun, but no great tango performances yet. The night was closed by a dinner in one of San Telmo´s nice restaurants, where we arrived a bit early at about 21:30, as we were the first. We ate our first steak of the week and then Hjalmar and Karoline were ready for bed after this long day that followed a 30 hours travel.
The second day we continued our exploration under the extremely hot sun. Passing the Obelisco on Avenida 9 de Julio (with 140m the widest in the world, and named after Argentina´s birthday on the 9th of July 1816), on to theatro Colon (which must be amazing on the inside but was closed because of renovations) and Galerias Pacifico, a shopping mall in a historical building with big murals in the central hall where we met Maradona and Santa. To meet more famous persons, we took a taxi to Recoletta, where we were happy to find some nice terraskes, the first we saw in Buenos Aires. After a nice hamburger we were ready for the Recoletta cemitry where, amongst other famous Argentinians, Evita Peron rests.
At night we took our second tango class, and being the lucky bachelor of the group I got to dance with all the 55+ women present. After this it was time for our second steak, this time in Puerto Madero, an old harbour district that is completely renovated and now houses lots of restaurants and higher class Argentinians living in the lofts above these. A tip from the people of the Mansion made us go to "Happening" and we enjoyed a hughe steak, as only Argentinians can make them.
On day three we rented bikes to explore the parcs in the palermo district. Also cycled to the "sea" which is actualy the estuarium of the rio de la plata, where we had a drink at the club de los pescadores, a nice building, built on the pier. We finished our ride with a tour of the zoo and the botanical garden. After that it was time to try out another typical Argentinian habit, the siesta.
Not too long though, because at night we had booked for a tango show in Complejo Tango. Tango class, dinner and show, all-in-one. We skipped the class though, as we felt way to much advanced for this beginners course (or was it because there were about 40 people taking class in a way too small room?). Dinner was good though and the show fantastic, with live music and spectacular and variated dancing. At a certain moment the dancers started to invite people from the public and Hjalmar was a tango star for a moment. The other dancers got jealous though, so they leaded him out of the room. But fierce as only a Fiers can be he made his way back to our table, dancing with the most beautifull of all the dancer girls.
Day four started on plaza Dorrego at the heart of San Telmo, where every sunday the feria de San Telmo takes place. It is actualy not only the square itself, but also the surounding streets that fill up with antique stalls and on regular open spaces between those real porteños (people from Buenos Aires) give pasionate tango street performances. It is very nice to stroll through, it has an amasing atmosphere and we discovered some nice antiqueties, like original matchbox cars, sold with coresponding matchbox and an original, functioning, cylinder phonograph as invented by Edison.
Next on the scedule was the market in La Boca, another famous bario of Buenos Aires and homeground of the Boca Juniors, where Maradona once played and still Argentina´s best team. That day was also the day of the final competition match of the Argentinian league, and Boca would become champion if it didn´t loose the game. We had tried to get tickets by internet from some tour companies, but all were sold out, so we just went to get a feel of the atmosphere around the stadium. Arrived at the stadium we decided to try our chances on the black market though. A first attempt was through a rather weird guy who promised to get us in on the Boca side for U$S 50 each. After agreeing on the price I was the first to be smuggled in, he had a high position in the teams organization and would be able to do that, but we had to go one by one. He asked me to go stand in the line of entering supporters and disappeared to come back later with a ticket. And suddenly he wanted the money. We had aggreed to pay only when inside the stadium though and after some more discussion it was clear this was a fraud. The ticket he tried to sell me was for another game and he would undoubtly have disappeared from as soon as I had given him the money.
OK, next try, but for tickets for the visitors side now. Enough people tried to sell those and rather easily we bought 3 tickets for U$S 80, not bad for the seller, as one ticket costs only U$S 5, as was printed on the ticket. But the tickets seemed to be valid, as we got inside the stadium without any problems. Well... without problems, but also without part of our belongings as they were taken from us at the first police control on our way inside. The "dangerous" items: a water bottle, my deodorant, the sunscreen and the Boca Juniors merchandise we had bought when we still thought that we would be able to get into the stadium at that side (even not when we would keep them deep down in our bags, the police men looked at us as if we were crazy to take those hats into the Lanus, as the visitors were called, side. They would kill us if they saw those.) On our way in we had to pass three check points where we were fully searched and at the last one an official came to us to give us some very important instructions as "don´t chear when Boca makes a goal, stay together and close to the police, watch your camera´s, ...". We got the impression we were doing something realy dangerous. Which it was completely not.
Once inside the stadium we enjoyed the enormous atmosphere, sang with the Lanus supporters and were impressed by the vocal endurance of some of them. We only occupied a small part of the stadium though, as we were the visitors. My guess would be 50.000 Boca supporters and 5.000 Lanus supporters, all of them singing and dancing almost all the time. Impressive. By the end of the game we were completely integrated with the surrounding Lanus supporters and when at the end Lanus won very inexpectedly one of them huged us all and gave me his T-shirt. The fact that we had won and had to leave the stadium made us and most of the other tourists present a bit nervous though. But also that was unnecesary, as we had to walk about half an hour to find a taxi and never experienced any problem.
The emotions had cost us a lot of energy though, so we went to Palermo viejo, an older but fancy barrio of Buenos Aires , with a lot of restaurants and bars, to get something to eat. We took it easy though and ate pasta instead of the ever present meat, to give our stomachs a day of rest before the big goodbye dinner of the next day.
The last day, day five, we went back to La Boca, as we hadn´t been able to see its typical sites the day before. It turned out to be realy nice, with nice little cafes that have live tango performance whole day long and beautifully coloured house in the most known street of the barrio la caminita.
As it was the last Buenos Aires day, we thought some extra meat at lunch wasn´t a bad idea. We ordered a typical parillada and got a small barbeque placed next to our table with everything a pig has to offer on it (liver, kidneys, intestines, nose, blood sausage, and also some meat).
After a well deserved siesta we started, good sons of our parents that we are, our night with a bottle of champagne at the roof of the mansion. After that, Hjalmar and I (Karoline had seen enough meat) went to Cabaña Las Lilas in Puerto Madero. We arrived at 22:30, clearly a peak moment, as the restaurant was full. We got a beeper that would go off when a table would be available for us. Forced by the situation we started of with a drink at the bar and some 20 minutes later our table was ready. Seated at the table we saw 5 diffrent waiters pass by that all put something on our table, without us having ordered anything yet.
The sundried tomatoes, mozarella, olives, grilled paprika´s, diffrent kinds of bread were included in the "couverts". I ordered a bife de costilla las lilas and got half a cow on my plate, Hjalmar went for the baby beef and although it was smaller it was still big enough to feed 2 to 3 normal Belgians. Trained as we were after five days in Buenos Aires though, we ate it all. The wine we drank with it came from one of the last pages of an extensive wine list, as those on the first 20 or so pages all costed more than U$S 100. It was good enough though to make us decide to go look for some more wine in one of the nice cafes around plaza dorrego. A great end of a great visit!
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