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Published: April 4th 2010
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Plaza Congreso
Not far from our hotel we stumbled across the seat of Government (we think). Our first day in Argentina has gotten off to a cracking start....after I finally got out of bed just before 11. But after the long sleepless flight from NZ a well deserved sleep I reckon!
In the Lan Chile magazine I had read about a number of nice little coffee shops in BA, one of which didn't seem too far from our hotel, so Lucy and I headed off in what we thought was the general direction. We soon found ourselves in a grand impressive square (Plaza Congreso), but in the opposite direction of the cafe. We think that this is where the Government seated, which is what the name suggests. Very impressive anyway.
We wandered down the road in the other direction enjoying the sights until we made it to the cafe, where to our surprise there was a queue to get in. Founded in 1858 and frequented by many famous artists in its time, the Gran Cafe Tortoni turns out to be a bit of a tourist attraction. We decided to join the queue since we'd walked all that way, a good move as it turns out as the queue moved quickly. It was a gorgeous old
Mmmm!!
One of Buenos Aires' famous pasteleria's. Looks delicious! cafe with walls of wood veneer, mirrors, stained glass, and with lots of paintings by what we assume are famous Argentinian artists. However the food itself was clearly not prepared by any famous Argentinian chefs as it was very average. But a nice diversion.
We then kept wandering down the street, coming to the Plaza de Mayo, which is also where the Casa Rosada is, the Presidential offices. A large dark pink coloured building, there are a couple of stories as to how it got to be that colour, my favourite is that it was painted with bovine blood. Also on this plaza is the Catedral Metropolitana which we had a look through as well. It looked nothing like a cathedral from the outside but inside was quite spectacular and also is home to the remains of General Jose de San Martin, one of Argentina's revered heroes.....until his exile. What for (both hero and exile) I have no idea about.
From there we walked to the port area, called Puerto Madero, which is kind of like the Viaduct area in Auckland I suppose. Lots of restaurants, some shopping, lots of tourists etc.
Buenos Aires is a beautiful
Cafe Gran Tortoni
Just outside the famous cafe. city. We have just wandered around the downtown area for a day, stumbling across statues of famous people in little plazas, and admiring the beautiful buildings. Easy to imagine living here.
At the end of the day we headed towards the bus stop, Retiro, which was huge. Much larger than I was expecting, several stories high with hundreds of ticket offices and buses and dodgy shopping opportunities. I felt quite pleased with myself having bought some playing cards in one of the dodgy shops, however I should have been alerted to two clues on the box - "estilo espanol" and "50". I opened the pack and discovered that it was indeed playing cards, but not at all like any cards we are familiar with - four suits for sure, but none I'd seen before and instead of 1-10 and then Jack, Queen, King it was just 1-12. This was one of those things that had us dissolved in fits of giggles, then we decided to assign "our" suits to the Spanish suits. It was only when we started playing 500 that we realised there were no Queens, so we put the 2s back in and made them Queens. It
Cafe Gran Tortoni
It's right next door to the Tango Academy was probably the most taxing game of cards and brain exercise we had ever played, trying to get the suits right and work out left/right boughs and which ones were worth what! Must be doing amazing things for our brain power.
Despite the grand scale of the bus stop, we easily found the ticket office we needed, somewhere to find beer and pizza and most importantly our bus to our next destination, Puerto Iguazu.
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