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Published: February 8th 2014
After a quick 26 hours of flying, we finally arrived in Buenos Aires. Our first impressions of the city from the taxi were not as good as expected. We got to our hotel in Recoleta and both agreed that the city was looking super shady. While looking up a place to go out for dinner, I completely passed out and we decided to call it a night and start our adventures the next day.
Our first day in BA did not disappoint. We started close to our place at the Recoleta Cemetery, here there are huge mausoleums and tombs for some of the wealthiest people in Buenos Aires. It was very impressive with giant statues and pillars; it actually looked like a small town filled with marble houses. Afterwards we headed towards Plaza de Mayo down Florida Ave. On Florida Ave there are many shops and men yelling “Cambio, cambio, cambio”, we, of course, had heard of this before we left Calgary and went down there with the specific purpose of exchanging money on the ‘blue market’. Although it is illegal, you see many people changing money with these guys and the police standing right nearby are not doing anything
to stop it. On our first walk down the street we surveyed all the cambios deciding who looked the least sketchy/likely to rob us, deciding that none of them could be trusted – we chickened out and headed to Plaza de Mayo.
There was not a lot to see at the plaza, the government’s ‘Pink Palace’ was surrounded by protesters and tons of police with riot gear so we thought best to take a look at the church beside, Catedral Metropolitana. The church was beautiful, we visited the tomb of General Jose de San Martin which was guarded by two actual soldiers then took a quick rest to talk about our new plan for currency exchange. After deciding that we would head to the bank to exchange for a small amount of currency so we could at least buy some lunch, we headed to two nearby tourist attractions, the Old Pharmacy and the Basilica y Covento de San Francisco. Not really sure what the hype is about these two places, the pharmacy is in a very old building and is one of the original pharmacies of Buenos Aires from 1830 and although the San Francisco Basilica was closed,
we could easily see inside through the glass wall but were not overly impressed. We headed back down Florida to find a bank, while stopped at a crosswalk we were approached by a cambio and couldn’t resist asking him what the going rate was that day. We chatted for a bit and decided to go with him to change our money, he lead us a couple blocks away into a building with an office that was completely empty except for a slot in the wall and water cooler. We put our money in the slot, a girl took it, and came back with pesos. We did a quick count to confirm and parted ways. Binnson thought we would probably be murdered but ultimately, I did not feel unsafe at any point.
After getting an awesome rate with the cambio, Binnson felt like he had won the lottery and we went to lunch at Cafe Tortoni. It’s a pretty famous little cafe off of Ave de Mayo, at this point we had put muchos kilometers on already and really welcomed the break from the hot sun and humidity. We have invented our own language for our communication purposes of this
trip, Espanchinglish, a mix of Spanish, English, and Chinese. For most purposes it is just Spanglish but it varies depending on the situation. For example, at Cafe Tortoni, we are done and ready to leave so I look at the waiter and confidently say “La cuenta, por favor”, at which point he gives me an inquisitive look- my confidence shatters and I say, “Can we get the la cuenta, por favor”, somehow he figures it out and brings us our bill. It is hilarious to us, especially as we realize how screwed we are when we leave this fairly English fluent city to head out to the smaller towns around Argentina.
We decided to check out one more place and walked down to Puerto Madero. Puerto Madero is a nice neighbourhood by the water that is modern and has a cool bridge and ship that you see in a lot of pictures of the city. There was an outdoor gym that we played around for a little while (despite already walking 22kms at that point in the day!) before heading back towards Recoleta. I had already gotten a sunburn and two blisters by the time we got home after
our 30km trek around the city. Dinner time doesn’t start until around 10pm in Argentina so following suit we headed back out later that night to El Estrebe in Recoleta. Binnson got his first Argentine steak and I was reminded that you shouldn’t drink wine after being out in the sun all day walking a ¾ marathon.
The forecast predicted rain for our next couple of days and accordingly we prepared a rainy day itinerary to entertain us. There were rain clouds in the sky and humidity thick enough to cut with a knife when we started out the following day but that quickly changed into sunny skies and equally thick humidity. We decided to follow through on our rainy day itinerary as air conditioning was going to be a necessity for sure. We started at El Ateneo Grand Splendid, an old theatre turned into a book store, it was really cool to walk around and see people hanging out in the box seats reading books enjoying their day. As we entered El Ateneo, a lady fell down on the sidewalk directly behind me, she grabbed onto both of my butt cheeks as hard as she could to try
to break her fall but alas my butt was not big enough to save her and she crashed right to the ground. Despite feeling slightly violated, I turned to see if she was okay and helped her back up. She looked pretty embarrassed so we headed inside and didn’t attempt our Spanglish.
Afterwards we went on a guided tour of Teatro Colon, our guide was fantastic and we learned a lot of history behind Buenos Aires and how the opera/theatre culture really reflected society as a whole in Buenos Aires throughout history. Binnson decided that we had better change the rest of our USD into pesos before heading out into the rest of Argentina and we headed back to Florida Ave in hopes of finding ‘Juano from Ecuador’ to change it again. Of course, he was gone and we were back in the same dilemma as the day before, who to trust?! We ducked off the Ave for lunch inside of Galerias Pacifico and then traded money for an even better rate than the day before in an even more sketchy set up on the side of the road for all to see. With a big fat wad of
pesos in our pockets we decided to get the eff out of there and zig-zagged a few blocks combined with some last minute jay walking into intersections to lose the make-believe people who were definitely going to rob us after witnessing how much money we just exchanged in plain view.
On our last day in Buenos Aires, it rained all morning so we decided to listen to Mother Nature and sleep in. Once the rain let up, we put on our rain jackets and went for a walk to the Japanese gardens. We passed by countless statues and cool buildings/bridges/and parks but have no idea the names of all of them. We were getting eaten alive by mosquitoes by the time we actually arrived at the Japanese gardens but they were really cool, a little small but very reminiscent of Japan. They had a Japanese restaurant on site and we went in for lunch. There were zero vegetarian options so I decided that today was the day, I would eat meat. After not eating meat for the last 6-7 years, this decision was not easy but I had been talking about maybe eating meat again in 2014 and so
I just went for it. I had a little bit of salmon and a little bit of shrimp and Binnson ate the rest. We headed back out on our walk and of course, maybe 20 minutes later I would come across my favorite Vegan/Vegetarian graffiti that I seem to find in so many random countries. It was a sign. I have not eaten meat again.... :-).
Later that night, when one should be heading to bed, we headed back out on 5 km round-trip journey to go for pizza at another famous old restaurant, El Cuartito. We had the Buenos Aires specialty pizza Fugazzetta, which is about 10 lbs of cheese plus an entire onion- it was so amazingly delicious. We had another special espanchinglish moment when we ordered our food at El Cuartito, the waiter came by with our pepsi’s and looked at Binnson and asked him a question in full on Spanish, Binnson looks at me and asks, “Do you want a straw?”, I say “No, I’m good”, Binnson looks back at the waiter, “No, we are good”. The waiter looks at him puzzled (this restaurant is crazy busy, not one chair in sight and the waiters
are running around like chickens with their heads cut off), pulls out a menu and points – “Fugazzetta grande, si?”, Binnson, “Ah si, gracias”. He walks away.... sigh! Haha. Oh well, the food and atmosphere were great and it was a fun end to our stay here.
Considering my initial impressions of Buenos Aires, I was completely blown away with how much I fell in love with this city. It was always so lively and beautiful with all of the old European-style cafes and architectural influences. I’m excited to come back here at the end of our trip!
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
Click & Tell
Great pic of an inciteful blog of the many facets of B.A...an excellent read. Recoleta, money changers, feelings of uncertainty & disquiet, cheeze, Cafe Tortoni, Pacifico Gallerios, the old & the new, glitz & old world charm...and then there was the sunburn...all delivered with delightful humour. How could I not relate to this blog that had shades of mood to my Beds are Burning in Buenos Aires blog. A great read and I look forward to your further adventures and fun slant in Argentina (if that is where you are heading) and check out my forthcoming Patagonia blogs while I dance through that amazing locale.