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Published: March 25th 2009
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Buenos Aires - Plaza San Martin
The trees make this city really beautiful. We arrived in
Buenos Aires at about 8pm and driving in from the airport we could see this was going to be a really neat city. It was a welcome change after being on the boat and the weather was nice and warm. We were pretty exhausted from our day of travel, so we checked in to our hostel and sat down at the hostel restaurant to plan our time in BA. Luckily, the hostel staff were super friendly and helpful and gave us tons of great recommendations.
We woke up to a clear blue sky, sunny day. The weather was amazing too - about 27 degrees with a slight breeze, perfect weather for spending the day walking around. We followed the walking tour in our guide book, starting at Plaza San Martin. The lady at the hostel told us to get off the subway stop and go towards the bears. We had no idea what she meant at the time, but as soon as we came above ground we laughed when we saw about 100 bears in a circle around the plaza. They were all part of the
United Buddy Bears program - the bears promote living together in peace and harmony
on their global tour. Around 140 Buddy Bears (each 2 m tall) represent as many countries recognized by the United Nations. The area around the plaza was beautiful, so many trees and green spaces. There was also a dog park with so many dogs just hanging out together - some sitting on their own park bench while others walked around or slept in the shade.
We continued down Florida Ave. the main pedestrian shopping street and stopped for some delicious ice cream (Argentinians believe their ice cream and pizza rivals the best of Italy's!). It was pretty tasty. We crossed over Av 9 de Julio, which some claim is the widest street in the world (16 lanes at its widest) to view some of the older buildings in the city. Next, we walked to Plaza de Mayo which houses the Casa Rosada (Pink House). It is the official office of the president (Cristina Kirchner - we found it interesting that the president of Chile is also a woman) and also the building where Juan and Eva Peron spoke to thousands of Argentinians from its balconies. When Madonna was filming Evita she sang from the same place Eva Peron spoke
to the people. The tour continued down Av de Mayo to Palacio Del Congreso. By this time we were pretty hot and tired so we stopped for lunch.
Our hostel recommended a great place for lunch and we're glad we took the advice. We had the best empanadas of the trip along with some wine. After resting our twigs and refuelling we toured the Cementerio de la Recoleta - a cemetery where many famous Argentinian politicians, celebrities and war heroes are buried. It was an amazing site, some of the graves were like small churches, others had elaborate statues and carvings, some contained a room you could enter to pay your respects. We visited Eva Peron's grave where she is buried with her family.
We were pretty tired after all of the walking (it was almost 6pm and we started out at 9am) so we went back to the hostel for a siesta before dinner. We found a great place for dinner in our neighbourhood, San Telmo, and called it a night. We tried to find some a club to watch some Tango dancing but both of the places we were recommended where closed that night. Luckily we
got to see some the next day.
After a good sleep and breakfast at the hostel we went to the section of the city called
La Boca. The buildings have been painted bright, vibrant colours and many artists set up stalls selling paintings or crafts. The story is that a lot of immigrants lived in the area in the late 1800s and worked in the meat-packing plants and warehouses. Apparently after they worked to spruce up the shipping barges at the port, they took home the leftover paint and splashed it on the corrugated-metal siding of their own houses. It was a pretty touristy area, but still cool to see.
That concluded our whirlwind tour of the city. If we had more time, I'm sure there were many more pockets of the city we could enjoy. We were both surprised at how much we liked BA and found it to be a pretty relaxed and sophisticated city.
The sad part about leaving was that we knew we were off to our last stop of the trip - Iguazu Falls! We headed to the airport for the 90 min. flight to the border of Argentina and Brazil.
Michelle
& Travis
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