BA
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
65
90
Trip End
Jan 06, 2009
Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Well, we were sad to leave Santiago, but we were excited about Buenos Aires. It was deemed party capital of the world and it even sounded glamorous.
We were in BA for a week also so I booked us into an apartment in a quiet suburb, so quoted, just outside of the City centre. Palermo is described in Lonely Planet as "Green parks, imposing statues, elegant embassies" and "on a sunny weekend afternoon is a porteno yuppie magnet" sounded good to me rather than being in the thick of things in the city. And it is indeed green and spacious with wide pavements and pretty street lamps. You could mistake it for Paris though - the same grand buildings and ornate iron entrance gates lining the streets.
After the frantic past two months of Oz and NZ, we were hoping Santiago would be some down time for us
Andes and clouds
. But we got kidnapped - we were thrilled we were though! So, we then decided BA would be our down time place instead. I chose an apartment so we could come and go as we please, have our own privacy and it was also quite cheap. The apartments are run as if they are Hotel rooms so 24 hour security guard and an office that can deal with problems, queries arising. We were met by a young chap who showed us the apartment and we signed the contract. It was a lovely place with our own kitchen, bedroom/living room and bathroom and a balcony overlooking the street below. The view was great actually. Up on the roof was a small swimming pool and gym and Sauna. We did a walking tour around Palermo which was fascinating. We went to the Evita museum which was very moving and we ate lunch outside a big restaurant under the trees (David: Tree. Singular. It was absolutely massive, got to have been at least 10 metres radius). My tuna salad was enormous and it was great fun people watching. We also went to Cementerio de la Recoleta which is a huge cemetery with hundreds of beautiful sarcophagi. Some of these tombs are like small houses, one was like a shop with glass doors!!! Incredible. It was similar to the cemetery in Paris, La Pere Lachaise, but the one in Paris is much more beautiful with tons of overhanging trees making the whole cemetery really dark on a blindingly sunny day. The Paris cemetery is like walking into a chilling forest of monsters and adventures. Anyway, back to Chile! Evita is buried here with her family and there were lots of flowers spread about.
We went to the cinema one night and saw the new James Bond film. It's brilliant! However, the handheld camera stuff during the action shots was soooo annoying. You couldn't see who was who, who was where, what was where, it was just one massive blur and it gave you a headache
Andes from the air
. Really disappointing because there was a really fantastic scene with scaffolding but god only knows what the hell was going on. (David: I agree, I have no idea why this fast hand held action style is so popular. First rule of film-making has got to be 'tell the story'. What story is being told with shaky, blurry colours whizzing in front of your eyes? I saw the beginning of the sequence - and I saw Bond win at the end... what was the point of the 5 minutes in between. Perhaps it's in there to give people a chance to go to the toilet.)We also visited Plaza Naciones Unidas, which is a large green area with a fountain. In the fountain is a sculpture of an enormous metal flower that apparently closes its petals at night like a real flower!?
We went into the City for a walking tour too. We saw the Casa Rosada where Evita famously spoke to the crowds below her in the 1940's. It's a beautiful building which also housed a museum but unfortunately it was closed when we were there.
We visited the Cathedral in the City. It was absolutely stunning. The mosaics on the floors of Cathedrals are so beautiful and I couldn't help imagining how many people had marched, strolled, got married, mourned upon these mosaics over the centuries. However, what we witnessed next was quite a shock. There was a woman on her knees, on a cushion, replacing some of the mosaics on the floor. With some epoxy resin grout as though she were tiling her bathroom. Naturally this product is probably the very best to affix mosaics to a Cathedral floor. But it's a Cathedral floor! These mosaics have been in place for centuries and now some of them were being re-fixed with a glob of B & Q's finest adhesive!!
BA by air
!Walking through Buenos Aires was sad. We assumed Buenos Aires would be like Santiago. But it wasn't at all. There is a stark contrast to it all. Like most cities there are streets in Buenos Aires that reek of money with glass-shimmering designer shops with highly polished cars waiting outside. Jewellery shops with a bell outside and ominously expansive gated buildings with watchful security guards and CCTV outside. However, over all parts of the City there is a layer of neglect and decay. Beautiful historical buildings are just closed up and derelict with no money to bring them to life. Their smashed windows and scrawled graffetti like a corpse's face rotting away. On the metal shutters of one old grand building, someone had sprayed the words "WAR" across it. As well as stray dogs, there are shoeless children running around who surround you if you are carrying a bottle of cocoa cola and homeless people lounge on steps of churchs and shops and under trees. At the entrance to a metro station there were 4 homeless children, perhaps about 12 or 13 years of age, sleeping sprawled across the pavement as well as adults laying oblivious to passer bys and the deafening commotion of traffic roaring round corners and down streets.
We walked along the world's widest road
A barbie shop?? shop???!!!
. It's Avenue 9 de Julio with about 20+ lanes. Seriously! On both sides of the road. It was madness. And good god can Argentinians drive!! Fast!! They come at you like a speeding bullet then a slam of their brakes ensures you can cross the road safely. To cross was a small feat of irrational fear. It was a beautiful Avenue though, surrounded by green with tall trees and plants. Right at one end of the Avenue was The Obelisk, a mere 67metres high by 49 square metres! It was built in 1936 to celebrate 400 years since BA was first founded. In the City, we walked around the Palacio del Congreso. This was modelled on Capitol Hill in Washington DC and built in 1906. The Palacio stands tall and proud facing a small plaza where stands Monumento a los Dos Congresos. This is a massive statue and fountain which is all gated off!! Probably to prevent more graffetti being sprayed all over everything. In the plaza are a plethora of pigeons, homeless people in a coma around the base of smaller statues or shacked up in a corner of the plaza under plastic sheeting and a mountain of carrier bags containing their life's contents. The plaza is lovely but stank of dog poo and decay and the statues and historical memorials were all scrawled with graffetti or crumbling away. Really sad.
Not one pavement, in any area of Buenos Aires is free from cracks, broken slabs or is just not there. And the most annoying thing about Buenos Aires is the dog shit EVERYWHERE. On every single pavement there is dog poo so you have to constantly watch where you are walking and it's like an obstacle course. The smell of dog poo sometimes is really overpowering that you have to hold your nose as you walk along a certain pavement. It's just disgusting.
We went on the metro to the City and for some bizarre reason, we received one ticket for both of us so that when we went through the gates one of us had to turn around, hand the ticket to the other so that they could then come through
Appetising food...apparently!
. We were assured just the one ticket was all we needed. The metro trains were absolutely filthy, litter everywhere under the seats and on the platforms. So surprising. There is also so much pollution in the City. One day, having walked about in the sunshine wearing white flip flops, I returned to our apartment and my feet were BLACK, simply from the pollution of traffic. As you walk along the street there is a grey haze hanging in the air from the buses, taxis zooming everywhere. At times, I really found it difficult to breathe.
It's true what they say: Buenos Aires NEVER sleeps. Our apartment faced the street and even though we were on the 5th floor and even though we had 'double glazing' the noise 24 hours a day was just insufferable!! Lorries would rumble past, sirens would ear-bleedingly whoosh past regularly, workmen would drill, cars would hoot, refuse trucks would roll and rock and bleep, lorries would unload with slams of metal doors and trolleys rattling over pavements. These sounds were not restricted to 9am-6pm. It was through the night too. One night, locals had obviously been out drinking and they were screaming, shouting, cars were hooting along with them, it was just mental. The double glazing we had may as well have been made from paper
A building in Palermo..name escapes me!
. Sometimes, while walking along the street, David and I could physically not hear each other over the din of traffic, sirens, dogs barking, it's just incessant noise. At least London sleeps at night!!One night we went to the restaurant which was opposite our apartment. We were told it was good, not brilliant, but good. Because I couldn't understand the menu and because no one there knew English, I opted for simple Fusilli pasta bolognaise. You can't go wrong. David opted for Chicken supreme and mashed potato. (David: Other than Empanadas, which are delicious, there wasn't much in the way of typical Argentinian fare anywhere. Other than steak, I suppose. A bit boring in that respect. Mostly it's Italian or French, but very little Spanish. Odd, maybe we didn't go to the right places.) What David got was chicken schnitzel with Smash and I did indeed get fusilli pasta bolognaise but there was no mince. Instead it was cubed meat which actually was appetising when you weren't grinding your teeth on gristle or fat. Awful and any true Italian would turn in their grave if they witnessed me being able to stand my fork vertical in the middle of my pasta!! It was so overcooked and stodgy. We left half our meals. For safety and convenience sakes, we went to a TGI Friday's one night. You can't really go wrong. My Jack Daniels burger was cold with limp chips and the bun was smothered in what seemed like treacle so anything I touched on the table got stuck to my fingers or elbows even!!! (David: I suspect Jack Daniels burgers at TGI are the same the World over: sticky) The bacon was termed 'crispy' but it was so overcooked I couldn't physically chew it let alone swallow it so had to spit it out for fear of choking on it! It was like trying to chew on a pipe cleaner!! We came to the conclusion that Argentinians just can't cook!! Admittedly we haven't really thrown ourselves into the culinary delights of Argentina but from the meals we've had so far, everything has been overcooked, cold, stodgy, the meat's been the cheapest cuts of fat and it's just been very very poor
Tombs
. (David: They need Gordon to sort them out.)What we've experienced of BA has not enthralled me at all. My thoughts above are quite negative, I agree. However, we were only here for a week and probably only saw one tenth of what the City really has to offer. More importantly, Argentina has many stunning, exquisite natural beauties which will draw us back to the country. I'm really glad we came to BA. It is indeed a beautiful city and has so much potential to be the magnificent, grand City that it once was. Sadly, the lack of funds has just left the City in ruins. (David: It's an example of the fallen mighty. A bit like Britain in the 70s I suppose. They even have red telephone and post boxes, identical to English ones...)
Our next destination is: Sao Paulo and Rio in Brazil.
Love, us xxxxxxxxx
