Buenos Aires
Trip Start
Nov 15, 2008
1
39
68
Trip End
Jun 15, 2009
Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Sunday, March 1, 2009
So Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina and the birth place of Tango. It is one cool city with something for everyone. For the first four days I have to say we really didn't do much, it rained one day, I felt sick then Dave felt sick....... Well we watched a lot of movies anyhow.
But finally we got to discover the city. The area we stayed in was the main city centre, so the shopping mall and business centre. The mall on Florida Street was really cool especially late in the afternoon when bands and street performers would come and do their thing, we even saw some people putting on a tango show right in front of our hostel.
We did a bit of a walking tour around the centre and saw the pink house where Evita and her husband would talk to the masses, saw the Obelisk and some of the oldest buildings from BA
The Obelisk
. Some streets really looked very French, it almost felt like we were back in Europe (until you walked around the corner or saw a Ute drive past with people sitting in the back).We explored the Recoleta area, one of the more expensive areas in BA and walked around the cemetery. This is the strangest cemetery I have ever been to. There is no grass and every family has there own monument. Some are huge with a big marble foyer inside and then stairs leading down to the crypt. Some are very decrepit and you can see the very old coffins just sitting there, it is a little spooky, I don't think I would want to walk around here at night! Evita's grave is here and we had a look with all the other tourists.
The best parts of BA and the ones with the best vibe were San Telmo and La Boca. We went there on Sunday when San Telmo has its weekly Antiques market. There were heaps of people about both tourists and locals and there atmosphere was great. The streets are all cobbled her and the buildings are old some shabby some just with a heap of character. We saw some more tango dancers and wandered looking at all the old junk for sale.
We then walked into La Boca, one of the more dangerous areas in BA. We got to the Caminito area were all the tourist are with out a problem and began to relax. This place is great, all the corrugated buildings are painted bright colours and the streets are also cobbled, there are stalls selling a million different things and restaurants with tables out side. People were dancing on the streets and there was always music. It was a very cool place.
We left and wanted to go for lunch down near the newly developed harbour area, so as we had no trouble coming into La Boca we decided to walk back out
Have you ever seen so many!
. Well we went another way which was probably our first mistake and we walked toward the la Boca harbour area which was our second mistake. Half way out we turned down a street and then saw a young family sitting having a bit of a BBQ, the mother looked at us and quickly started looking about her. She then started to wave her arms at us in a stop type gesture all the while looking around. It was soon very clear to me that we had to leave this place now! We quickly turned around fund the first cab and told him to take us back to San Telmo. The cab driver said he wouldn't even drive down the street we were about to walk down. Oops.To finish off our stay in BA we splashed out and got an amazing lunch. It was at a place when literally translated was called 'follow the cow' and for about $30 Australian we got all the BBQ meat and salad we could eat, a bottle of red wine a bottle of water and a dessert. It was great, but we were both feeling a little sick after wards.
