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Published: March 16th 2007
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Buenos Aires
This is Buenos Aires' copy of the US Congress building - bloody pikies! We've heard so many travellers rave about Buenos Aires so we were pretty excited when w turned up. The bus there, however, was nothing short of completely crap! It let rain in through the door and the windows and when i picked my bag up after 18 hours of travelling you can imagine how amused i was to find it soaked through. Luckily our passports were in a plastic bag or we might have been stuck in here! We complained to the bus company, but this being a latin country we got absolutely nowhere with them!!
The hostel we stayed in was really nice and exactly the kind of lively friendly atmosphere we needed after the journey from hell! They had a mexican party in the evening so we all had beer and mexican food which was cool! There was a pool table in the hostel so Simon got to beat me at pool on multiple occasions! He even beat me when using his left hand (i really am THAT bad)! So we spent our first half day in Buenos Aires in the hostel playing cards and pool but we did get up early on the second day and set
off to explore the city. We discovered that, like most cities, all the main tourist attractions were covered in scaffolding! The Pink Palace (and yes, it really is pink) where Evita made her speaches was all covered in scaffolding and netting which kind of spoilt the atmosphere! We tried to go in the Cathedral (which might i say is significantly less impressive than St. Albans Cathedral) but i didn't have my shoulders covered!! Feeling somewhat let down by what is supposed to be an amazing city, we sat down for some lunch. I had, however, briefly forgotten the one rule when it comes to Argentinian food (check if there's ham on it) and my Caeser Salad came covered in the stuff!! The menus here are hilarious to look at because literally every dish will have ham in it and even if it doesn't say so on the menu it will probably arrive covered in ham!! For the rest of the day we just wandered around the parks in the city with Simon walking like John Wayne due to the rather savage sunburn which he managed to get on the tops of his legs in Iguazu!
Our third day in
Buenos Aires was a lot more successful! We decided to sack off the tourist thing and went to the cinema (it was after all Simon's birthday and, although it wasn't Orange Wednesday, we decided that we could stretch to the full 2.50 which the ticket cost us)! In the evening we hooked up with some friends we met in Salvador and went to the South American Music Conference which, believe it or not, was three rooms of trance, house and minimal electro (i don't think either of us knew what that was till we got there)! It was a lot of fun but the drinks were, as expected, an uber rip-off. It was cool though and when we eventually crawled back into our hostel at 1pm the next day our room mate told us off because she'd been really worried about us!!
Buenos Aires was really cool but more the kind of city you could live in than a tourist attraction. It's loads safer than most other South American cities, which obviously has it's merits, but it's also really european and i couldn't help feeling that if i'd wanted to stay in a european city then i would have
Simon being a penguin
This requires some explanation... Sandy wanted a photo of a penguin next to a cactus, so hereĀ“s Simon pretending to be a penguin next to a cactus!! Nice try! stayed at home! It has replicas of loads of buildings, like the Syndey Opera House, the US Congress Building and even Big Ben!! It was cool but we headed south after Buenos Aires to somewhere colder and a whole lot more South American!
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Chris
non-member comment
It's a pity you lived in Chiswell Green and never used to get the Red Rose bus to Kings Langley - that used to let rain in through the windows - fond memories!