Advertisement
Published: August 4th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, a city of 12 million people, also its the party capital of Argentina.
We arrived from Rosario after a five hour bus journey, very very short by South American standards.
First thing that hit us was how busy it was, of course it being rush hour didn't help the cause very much.
The four of us were booked into the Obelisco Suites Hostel smack back in the middle of the city. The hostel was very nice with some excellent helpful staff.
After a nice meal and some vivo tinto we made it back to the hostel and decided to have a couple of beers, of course this didn't work out very well as they don't have a closing time, nobody is really sure of what time we went to bed that night!!
The first couple of days we went around some of the main sights in the city centre. We saw the famous balcony where Evita made her "don't cry for me Argentina" speech, see the government buildings where all the farmers where making a protest against increasing taxes on exports. We also had a coffee in the Cafe Trotoni, this is Buenos Aires
most famous and oldest coffee shop.
The hostel was also located very close to the main shopping part of the city (Florida), here you can get some really cheap leather goods if you have any space to carry them in your rucksack.
At the weekend we decided we would try to make it to a club. Most clubs only open at 2am so after some beers and food in the hostel we made our way to Palermo, the party district of the city. The place only gets busy from midnight on so we stopped in a few bars but as we met up with Richie and Caroline we didn't move out of the pub. We made it back to the hostel around 6:30am and the other 4 at around 7am. It was a bad attempt at getting to a club, we blame Anto for poncing around the place!!
On the Monday we took a two night trip to Uruguay (see other blog for this).
As we could not get a hostel to give the four of us the rooms we wanted we decided to book a apartment for 6 nights for when we got back from Uruguay. We
Moument
One of Buenos Aires many mouments. got one from the web, its cost 600 US Dollars for the 4 of us which was cheaper than double rooms in any of the city's hostels, also its was four blocks from Palermo and had a patio along with a computer. The apartment was a life saver, we could fully unpack our bags and get some much need veg into our diets. We did some home cooking and drinking, a litre of beer in the supermarket is about .50c euro!!
We decided that to help us with the rest of South America we would do a Spanish course. We got one through the hostel for 600 pesos for two of us (126euro), that is for 12 hours, the course was excellent even if it was hard to get out of bed, it really did feel like school again!!
On our last night with the lads, (they needed to start making moves north towards Bolivia) we decided to go to one of the city's best steak houses. We had to wait over 2 hours to get a table for 5 of us but it was well worth the wait. La Cabrera in Palermo is where we went, the
Evita Balcony
Where Evitia Made her dont cry for me Argentina speech. steak was so good and huge it was hard to finish it. The steak were nearly as big as Sean head as they pictures will tell you.
After departing with the lads we checked into a hotel in San Telmo area of the city, we were staying a extra three nights. This is not the best area of the city but the hotel staff were excellent. The day we got there the farmers protest was huge, they closed off 9 de Julio (a massive 14 lane road that runs through the middle of the city) , 220,000 people turned up at the protest, it passed off peacefully and also worked, the government took back the tax changes they had planned.
We did some sight seeing in our last few days in Buenos Aires, went to see Evita grave, this is in the Recoleta area of the city, it also houses the grave of Admiral Brown, a Irish guy who was a hero in the navY. Recoleta is a nice, rich area of the city. We also went to a tango show, we got picked up from our hotel and driven to the venue really good show called Sabor
The Perons
Juan and Evita Peron Tango, we have a video up on the blog for those who are interested. On our last day we went to La Boca, this is the home of Boca Juniors. The place is made for tourist with locals selling all kinds of souvenirs and stuff.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.065s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 9; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0382s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb