Buenos Aries Day 2

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Saturday 29th January
Day in Buenos Aires

A long sleep in and a leisurely breakfast was our treat this morning. Buenos Aires looked immense when seen from the aeroplane yesterday, and highly populated. We thought it was going to be a noisy, dirty and overcrowded city with not much
to see. We were very wrong and realised it lived up to being one of the worlds loveliest cities. We went into the city on a complementary R.Steins jewellers bus into a lovely area. The streets were wide and clean, full of interesting old and new buildings. We walked up a main pedestrianised street full of street traders and performing artists, in so much that it reminded us of Les Rambles in Barcelona.
Today's quest was to try to find the church where the pioneers from Lewis came to. I had read in the Return to Patagonia book about the church and it's records and pictures of the early Scottish settlers. The Rev ????? had been most helpful in contributing to collecting their history and we were keen to find the church and talk to the minister if possible. However we had not a clue to it's whereabouts so enquired of a young tourist guide in the port. To our delight he said he belonged to that church and showed us on the map more or less where it was. Result.
We set off walking along Florida street which was bustling with activity. They had some nice shops selling the wonderful leather items made here and in contrast, many street traders along the centre displaying their meagre wares.. the usual tourist items, our eyes were everywhere. We had been warned to watch our pockets and not wear valuables. There was someone from our boat who that day got mugged for her watch!! We got a little lost but Murdo saved the day and kept us right. I had us walking in the opposite direction!!! However my inadequate map reading introduced us to the Plaza De Mayo which was lined by magnificent buildings one of which was the Cathedral Metropolitana. The sun was hot and sight seers were humming around. What struck me was that there were clocks on nearly every building , so one would never be stuck for knowing the time!!
We headed towards the general area of the church we were looking for was and meandered in and around the side streets. Not easy to find but the anticipation gave us a spring in our steps!! However, we did eventually find it standing on Avenue Belgrano in all its splendour. We were very delighted and took several photos. Unfortunately to our disappointment it was closed, so we never got the chance to talk to the reverend or to see inside and sample the Scottish history. Never mind we were blessed to find it !
Our next part of the quest was to find the largest Avenue in the world which Buenos Aires was host to. It was not difficult as all the avenues opened out onto it. It WAS wide, colourful and noisy and halfway down stood an obelisk. We had been looking for a place to eat but decided not to hang around along the Avenue as a mugging had just taken place and police were present. We headed back onto town and came across an authentic Argentinean restaurant and ordered light meals that when they came were so huge we struggled to fill our tummies! It was weird that we were sitting in Argentina eating lunch and watching a football match between Manchester United and Southampton!!!
Despite our fullness we managed to squeeze in an ice cream each as we strolled back to pick up the shuttle bus back to the boat. What an unexpected lovely day we had!!!

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