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Published: November 30th 2009
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Buenos Aires instantly had a European feel to it. It´s referred to as the 'Paris of South America´... I don´t know that I´d go that far but it has easily been our favourite city up to this point.
We spent most of our first day stuck at our hostel as it rained all day ruining our sightseeing plans! The next day we had a bit more luck and managed to squeeze in most of the main sights. There are a lot of plazas dotted around the city, not as picturesque as some of the others we've seen, but quite a lot of historical significance attached to them. There are a lot of memorials dedicated to the soldiers of the Falklands (the crazy German teacher liked to inform us regularly that we would be hated by Argentinians because of this - not the case). The most interesting thing we went to that day was the cemetery of the rich and famous. It was like a small town, lots of tiny avenues with the graves lined up like houses on either side. If you looked through the doors you could see the caskets of each family member stacked up on the inside,
pretty eerie actually. However, most people´s visit there is to see the grave of Evita. You know when you´ve found it because you struggle to get near it. Finally, we headed to the Jardin Japones, a garden designed by two Japanese men, we thought that seeing as we would be in Japan in Winter, it would be nice to see what it might look like in Summer! I think Daniel was trying to prolong our visit there as, due to the unusual amount of homosexuals staying in our hostel, I had discovered that that evening there was to be a Gay Pride Parade through the streets of Buenos Aires. I could hardly contain my excitement at the prospect of this.
We got to the beginning of the parade just as it was all starting, managed to get a decent position and waited for the fun to start! Daniel looked quite distressed. However, this was all about to change as in the distance he noticed the transexuals float heading towards us. I´m not sure that shouting "look at that one!" is really what Gay Pride is all about but at least he was starting to enjoy himself. Our favourite transexual
(yes we had a ranking system) was in fact an intruder on the transexual float, just an old man in a silver dress that spent most of it´s time up round his waist, revealing frilly white knickers and the evidence we needed to confirm that he was indeed not a transexual. All in all a pretty cultural evening
The following day we went to the flea market nearby where we were staying. It is quite an affair, they close the roads all around and the streets are filled with stalls and performers, it is huge! Wandering around we were very lucky to stumble upon a restaurant serving lunch with a free tango show. We had planned to see tango while we were here but normally you have to pay quite a lot so this was a bonus. After this we headed back as we were going to the football, Boca Juniors v Colon. This included a stop at what looked like a garage for a beer and a very greasy burger (staple diet for football fans worldwide).
On the Tuesday, "The Day of the Gaucho (cowboy)" was being celebrated across Argentina so we traveled to the nearest Gaucho
town outside of Buenos Aires to see them all in their traditional clothing, singing and telling old stories (none of which we understood). Here, Daniel also consumed his fourth steak of just a week long stay in Buenos Aires. Sadly, we were unable to stay for too long as we had to get back to Buenos Aires to travel to Uruguay for our small "city break" in Montevideo.
The main purpose of us going over to Montevideo was because my Grandparents used to live there about 60 years ago. My Grandma remembered most of the address so we went in search of their old home. I´m pleased to say we managed to find it but I think the residents found my enthusiasm of their sreet a bit odd.
Montevideo is a really nice city, quite similar to Buenos Aires, we only had time to spend a couple of days there so we did all the main sights. We were quite sad to leave as the weather was so hot and we were heading down to a very cooler climate in Patagonia.
PS... For the Lewis´...I have included the pictures of Grandmas street at the end of all the
pictures (it begins with the Alberto Flangini street sign). The video I made was too large to upload so I will try and send that to Dad a different way. I hope Grandma recognises some of it, maybe even you will Philippa! xx
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Dad and mum
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get a load of that float!
Hi there tootlers! Thanks for the pics, great as usual. Mum was loving the pics then all of a sudden we got onto the tranny show, silence from mum then "you know the world is ending!" Brought to you by the expert of classic one liners! Couldn't believe you were in Grandma's old street - she'll be made up when she sees it. Lots of love will be in touch soon about Japan, rail passes, etc., X