Buenos Aires I'm just a little stuck on you.
Trip Start
Jan 10, 2008
1
21
95
Trip End
Ongoing
Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Thursday, February 28, 2008
If you read any guide book it will tell you that Buenos Aires is not about the sights you see while you are there it's more the experience of being there. We spent a lot of time in Buenos Aires, just being there and falling in love with the place.
It helped that we stayed in a lovely area called Palermo Viejo (old Palermo), which is a leafy suburb that is in a good area of Buenos Aires, filled with bars and cafes and easy to get around from. The place we stayed Urinate Club, a cute little guesthouse where we met some great people was only 6 blocks from the subway station making it really easy to get around.
The guesthouse we stayed in caters more to people staying for longer stays rather than for a couple of days at a time. Originally we booked for a few days then decided to extend it to a week and then move to another area. When it came time to think about moving we couldn't bare to leave and decided to stay in Palermo for our second week.
Boca Junior Stadium
We met some great people staying where we were. First we met Jim, from Canada who has bought a place in Buenos Aires and renovating/building it into a new hotel. Jim was looking for something to do in Buenos Aires and couldn't find anywhere to stay so he decided to open a hotel. It is only a couple of weeks away from being opened and looks amazing. Anyone wanting a great place to stay in Palermo check out www.miravidasoho.com
Victoria, is from Rosario in Argentina and we spent quite a bit of time with her and her boyfriend Alvaro, and friend Pocho, Nagore from Spain, Cornelia from Switzerland, Mario from Chile and Juan (the manager) from Patagonia. We also met up with Brian from the US on a tour and hung out quite a bit with him. We are hoping to catch up with everyone along the way in our travels.
The first day in BA (Buenos Aires) we headed into the city to check out Av Florida which is a big mall (like Hay St mall) in the centre of town. That night we decided to go to a tango show which was supposed to start at 12, we turned up at 11.30 because we like to be on time and waited, then had a drink, then another drink, by 2.00am the show still hadn't started and the band wasn't even making much of an effort to set up so we left. The second day it was ranging and we headed to Abasto a big shopping centre. For lunch we decided to try Parilla.
Parilla is typical Argentine BBQ. Argentines eat so much meat! They are famous for it. So we went to this little Parilla place with the plastic chairs on the side of the street.
Boca Junior Stadium
Not long after we sat down it poured with rain, we were under an awning but we still managed to get quite wet while we were trying to eat our lunch. So we ordered Parilla for two people and waited to see what we would get. First they bought us a board with our first serving of meat. This consisted of intestines, black sausage (sausage made entirely from blood), chorizo sausage and kidneys. We decided to give it all a try. I managed a mouthful of each washed down with wine. We ate the chorizo sausage very quickly and sat there sulking thinking that that was all we were getting for lunch and most of it we couldn't stomach. A while later we were brought another serve of meat which consisted of pork steak and beef chops. We then went and had an ice-cream to try and get the taste of offal from our mouths.We headed off to Recoleta to see the famous cemetery where Evita (Eva Peron) is buried. We were amazed by the cemetery, it's full of massive tombs, most have doors you can peer through and see the coffins and/ steps to a lower room. I was also surprised at how recent they are as most of the tombs are from the last century and the oldest tomb I found was just over 100 years old, the newest 10 years old. Some of the tombs have huge statues and sculptures adorning them.
Matt had developed a bad tooth ache by the time we got to Argentina so he managed to book an emergency appointment with a dental surgery that specialises in dental tourism, they market themselves to the US, UK and Canada for people who want to have dental work completed for a fraction of the price whilst also having a holiday.
La Boca
They gave Matt a root canal on the spot and we spent the better part of 4 days going to and from the dentals surgery to complete his treatment. Matt is pleased to report that his face no longer feels like someone is jamming a screw driver into the side of his face constantly.We caught the bus to La Boca where they have a very touristy couple of roads called Caminita. The buildings in this area are all brightly painted in different colours. The reason for this is that it was a poor port area and the residents would ask any oncoming ships for spare paint to paint their houses with. The street is covered with little cafes with tango shows and people selling tango related works of art. Also in this suburb is La Bombonera - the stadium of the football club Boca Juniors. We went through the museum and took a tour of the stadium. Boca Juniors is the biggest football team in BA and Maradona used to play for them. Maradona has his own private box at the stadium and is treated almost as a god, in fact there is a semi religion (Maradona - ism). We saw the VIP seats, got to walk on the pitch, went through the players warm up area and change rooms as well as the press conference room. It was a great tour and they told us the story of how the team got their colours etc.
Wednesday night we went to a tango band, not for the dancing as there wasn't really any but as the band is a typical tango band getting back to the roots of tango. The band consisted of 3 piano accordion players, 4 violins, 2 cellos, a piano player and a singer.
La Boca
There was a light show to add effect and it was really funky. The club where they play is like a big warehouse/hall and to help furnish the room they asked people to bring along unwanted chairs as long as they were safe and would not hurt anyone, to get free entry for 2 people. The place now has different tables and not a chair looks the same in a cool kind of way. The band is called Club Athletic Fierra Fernando www..... We then headed to Club Niceto for Zizek, a DJ night. At the early hour of 3 in the morning we decided to call it a night. (people who live in BA would call that a really early night, after all we didn't even see the sun come up!)We realised that we had been in BA for over a week and still hadn't taken a tango class so we headed off to a tango school with Cornelia from our hostel and took a class, so now I have to add learning tango to my list of things I want to do.
The next day we headed to the Japanese gardens to see them with Nagore and Alvaro, the gardens are the biggest Japanese gardens outside of Japan. There is a big carp pond in the middle of the gardens and when ever anyone walks anywhere near the edge the carp all gather around thinking that they will be fed, when they are fed it's like a feeding frenzy - they come from everywhere and practically jump out of the water to get to the food. We then headed to Tierra Santa. Tierra Santa is the world's first religious theme park and we'd heard that it was quite kitsch. It calls itself Jerusalem in Buenos Aires. The main attraction of the park is the 18m Jesus that rises from the mountain every hour to the sounds of 'hallelujah'. The Jesus also has 30+ mechanical movements and so turns around and also opens and closed it's eyes. Other highlights are the re-inactment of the last supper and various shows. As you can imagine Crap Elvis got many a strange look! We then headed to the city for coffee with Nagore, Alvaro and Vicky then to San Telmo for dinner. We were planning to see a friend play in his band but due to the language barrier there was a mix up at the door and we missed it.
Sunday we woke up late and had a leisurely brunch before heading to La Bombonera to watch Boca Juniors play Independiente. Matt was very excited and the game was very tense providing lots pf excitement Monday we got up early and headed to Tigre which is a 50 minute train ride from Buenos Aires, for the day. Upon arrival we decided to take a cruise up the delta and go to 3 bocas ( meaning 3 islands) for lunch . Apparently there are nice walking tracks on the island but a whole group of us managed to get quite lost and ended up at a dead end after walking for over an hour. So we backtracked and found somewhere to have a late lunch before taking the boat back to the town and catching the train back to Buenos Aires.
Our last day in Buenos Aires we were a bit sad to be leaving and Manuel dropped by for breakfast and we took a wander through some local shops. That night Augusto and Alejandro who we met in Rio came to pick us up and took us and a friend of theirs for a drink in San Telmo, which was lovely.
