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Published: October 21st 2018
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Another late start, we’re getting use to South American time I think. We have an English speaking tour of Casa Rosada booked at 12:30 but left early as opposite the Casa Rosada on Plaza de Mayo is the Cabildo de Beunos Aires where meetings were held to plan revolutions. As it would have been a 50 minute walk we decided to catch a taxi and it took us a bit longer this time but finally got one to stop and then another taxi honked his horn and stopped next to ours and they had a bit of a disagreement, so to speak.
As we got closer the driver then showed us google maps which indicated that many streets were closed for a festival today, so he had to take a more indirect route. I watched on my map where we were and we seemed to be stuck in a traffic jam, so when we were about 10 minutes walk away, I told the driver we would get out and walk the remainder. When we got to the Plaza we saw some people in very colourful costumes and noticed a stage had been set up so we walked over towards it
and saw more costumed people and stayed taking photos. It was then I noticed there was a lot going on at the stage and as we got closer noticed stands had been set up on either side of the street and this was actually the end of the parade. We couldn’t get onto the main street so stayed where we were and it was great as the bands continued playing and the people kept dancing past the stage and down the small street we were in and we had much better views of all the participants. It was very noisy and colourful and was one of those unexpected surprises that happen on occasions when you travel. Needless to say we didn’t get to the Cabildo but figured we had time later anyway.
When 12:15 came around I told Daisy we had better leave and so to the Casa Rosado. Security was quite tight. We had our tickets on our phones and we had to show our passports and put our bags through scanners. This is where the president works and greets dignitaries on their visits to Argentina and is a lovely building. This English tour is only done twice
on the weekends and you can only book two weeks beforehand. Numbers are limited so these book out quickly and there were about 60 people in our group.
It finished around 1:30 pm and we decided to have lunch and found a nice restaurant /bar called Newtime, almost next to the Cabildio. We shared a very nice, large roast beef and salad baguette and had a good rest there using their wifi. Even had a quick video chat with our dear friends Graeme and Mary Sandstrom who are traveling around Europe.
We then walked into the Cabildo and asked if there was any English but unfortunately not. Before reconsidering, the lady said it was free to visit, so we thought we’d have a look around anyway. It turned out that every room did have information sheets in English so it was interesting to be in such an important place in Argentine history and to learn a little more about the political conflicts in the past. There was also an interesting video showing all the major events such as celebration, funerals and protests that had occurred in the Plaza de Mayo during the last 100 years.
We then
walked about 25 minutes to see the Congress Building which was very impressive. By the time we lingered around, taking photos around Congress Square it was 5:20 pm so we decided to make our way home to pack and hopefully have an early night. Took us longer than the 24 minutes predicted by our app as I kept stopping to take photos as there are so many nice old buildings and parks in BA. Before going up to the apartment Daisy bought a couple of cakes from the patisserie next to our apartment and we ended up not going out again for dinner as we weren’t that hungry. Also managed to have a good video chat with Brendan and Delilah and also Mitchell. Got to bed around 10:30 and will be up at 4 am to meet our 5 am taxi pick-up to the airport.
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