Loving Buenos Aires
Trip Start
Jun 12, 2008
1
22
28
Trip End
Nov 20, 2008
Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Friday, September 19, 2008
The alcohol helped us to get a good sleep on the bus and I woke up just a breakfast was being served. We got into Buenos Aires at just before 10am, having been on our first bit of motorway in South America!! We hopped in a ludicrously expensive cab and made our way to our apartment
Dinner in our flat!
. We are staying in a very posh area of Buenos Aires called Recoleta and our apartment block seems to be full of old ladies! The flat itself was fine, nice and homely and had everything we needed. The place felt massive after having stayed in small rooms for months and months. The first thing I did was unpack every last thing in my bag and hide the backpack away in cupboard! We went for a stroll around the blocks near to our flat to find our baker, butcher, veg shop etc. Everyone was dressed very smartly and walking around with little dogs. I suddenly felt very out of place in my quick-dry travel trousers, fleece and big walking shoes. I really needed a pair of jeans and some heels if I was to fit in!We spent a lot of our time in BA wandering round the different areas. BA is really nice, people from BA think of themselves as European rather than South American and this shows all over the city. Somehow BA feels like the best of every European capital city with a big chunk of New York thrown in as the icing on the cake. As capital cities go I think it is up there as the best (Anna C, please note the word "capital", this means that NYC is still at the top!) Palermo was very nice, anyone who likes shopping would love it. It was very chic, full of boutiques and cafes, once again I felt very out of place in my old clothes. It seemed that the order of the day was shop, have a coffee, shop, have some lunch, shop, have another coffee and finish off with a bit of shopping
Dom in his domain
. I wasnīt included in this as our dwindling budget meant I couldnīt buy anything! We also wandered around the parks and went to the Japanese gardens which were beautiful.On Sunday we went to San Telmo, another area in BA, and went to the famous antiques fair. Here the streets were cobbled and the whole area is full of antique shops. The main square is packed with antique stalls and there are street performers and tango dancers. The whole area had a great atmosphere and we wandered around for ages looking for a bargain (which we could carry easily!). We also met up with our friends Toby and Louise and had a coffee in the main square and caught up. Whilst we were sat there, all of a sudden people started to clap slowly. It was very strange and soon the whole square was clapping. We didnīt have a clue what was going on and thought it was a social experiment to see how people would react if one person started clapping! We found out from our waiter that the main square is going to be demolished and the antiques fair will stop so the clapping was a protest. It would be incredibly sad if the fair stopped...so we joined in with the clapping for a bit! The 4 of us wandered around for a bit and looked for bargains, Louise and Toby were also renting a flat so they invited us back to theirs for tea. We all got stupidly excited about the fact we could do this, it really made us feel like we were living somewhere and had put down roots!
Next couple of days Dom had a cold and we were a bit lazy. I went for a few walks and got my haircut. That was a bit scary, I didnīt know any Spanish for that situation and didnīt have a clue what I was being asked some of the time. They would ask me things like "how do you wear your parting?" and I would just look at them and smile
Our patio garden
. I got through it and donīt look like a freak, but I will need another cut as soon as I get back! I also went to the Evita museum (not Domīs cup of tea) and enjoyed that, though I did have the Evita soundtrack in my head for about a week afterwards!Once Dom was better we wandered around the city centre. It was full of shops and businesses and was very crowded. We saw the Malvinas (Falklands) War memorial and felt a bit guilty at the large number of names of people who had died. But on the up side I did see the building my Dad worked in several years ago! We also saw the pink palace where the presidents have traditionally lived and saw the balcony where Evita made all her rousing speeches.
We also went to Recoleta Cemetery, which is the number one attraction in BA! It was unbelievable, there were no gravestones as such, they build houses for families. It was like a city in itself, there were even streets and street names! Some of the "houses" were really well kept while others had fallen into disrepair, it was very interesting and we ended up walking around for far longer than we expected to!
Towards the end of the week we walked around La Boca, where tango started
our bedroom
. Itīs near the docks and all the houses are made of tin and beautifully painted in bright colours. The central bit is very touristy, there was even a Maradona look-a-like you could have your picture taken with, but I saw Domīs face darken so we moved on from him pretty quickly!! If you went just off the main tourist streets though it had a very different feel. The houses were still tin but werenīt painted and there were stray dogs everywhere and burnt out cars. There was even a burnt out bus on one street! It had a bit of an edge to it but I still felt safer than I had done in places like Lima, and we felt like we had found the real BA. The only thing that happened to spoil things a bit was that Dom had his camera pick pocketed on the subway. So we spent Saturday at the police station getting a report for the insurance company. That day we also had to go to an Emergency Clinic because Dom had a really bad pain in his tooth/jaw. Police and Casualty in one day! Heīs ok though, the Dr couldnīt find any swelling so gave him strong pain killers. The annoying thing about the camera is that electronics are twice as expensive here than in the UK so itīs not worth buying another one. That means that from now on, if you read both blogs, our photos will be the same.
The last day it absolutely poured, our first rain in almost 6 weeks
watching tv
! We planned to walk around the docks but it was a bit miserable in the rain, though I should imagine itīs beautiful on a sunny day. We spent our last evening having a steak dinner and going to the cinema. We saw Tropic Thunder which was hilarious, but the funniest thing was that sometimes the jokes didnīt translate very well in the subtitles. There were two occasions when Dom and I laughed out loud and were the only people in the cinema to do so!!!I loved BA and am really pleased we spent such a long time there. The areas are all very different and itīs not too touristy so you get a good idea of what the city is really like. The people work hard but donīt seem to do silly hours, colleagues have a coffee together after work before eating out with their families and I really like their attitude to life. However at the same time I was looking forward to moving on to the next leg of the trip; Patagonia, which promised to be full of wildlife and spectacular scenery....
