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Published: September 19th 2012
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So where to begin.. We arrived in Buenos Aires now a week ago what an amazing city! We have walked all over the city. We have stayed in a beautiful hotel in San Telmo, it is an old 3 story house that has been beautifully decorated with murals and statues. Each room had a different painting in it. A great place to ease our way in to this trip.
We have spent our days exploring the city. The city is full of beautiful terrace houses, the saddest part is so many of these beautiful building are in need of a good clean and some TLC. This city is a mix of Paris and then Asia... The building remind us of Paris while the footpaths remind us of Asia, which means you need to spend equal amount of time looking up at the buildings and down at the footpath. As Renee discovered the hard way, nearly scoring a broken toe in the first day.
We spent time admiring Congreso and the Plaza de Mayo. The Catedral Metropolitana, sits at one end of the Plaza, is considered the most important church in Buenos Aires. From the outside it doesn't look much
like a church it looks more like a museum but inside there is no mistaking it. It is full of statues and alters, here lies the remains of General San Martin, a man who liberated Argentina his resting place is huge covered in the biggest flag I have ever seen. At the other end of the Plaza is the Casa Rosada a beautiful rose pink ornate building.
Plaza de Mayo is traditionally the site of protest for Buenos Aires, set up in the middle was a group of protesters, who appeared to have been camped there for quite awhile. Setting up at the other end was a huge amount of police, the riot police with their truck with battering ram and water cannon, and a line of police behind the fence that divided the half the Plaza in half. We continued looking around wondering what was planned took lots of photos then we headed out of the plaza.
When we got back to our hotel and we turned on the TV and saw the news which quickly answered any questions we had about what was planned in Plaza de Mayo, it was a protest against the government, the
news showed the Plaza and surrounds packed with people.
We have also spent time walking around Reterio, with the pretty Plaza Liberator General San Martín, wandering back and forth zig zagging the 20 lane Av. 9 de Julio. Admiring the Obelisco in it centre.
Puerto Madero a place that looks a lot like Melbourne's South Bank, it has old brick ware houses that have been converted into loft apartments and restaurants. Where Zac found small soccer fields that had teams playing against each other well into the night.
We admired the beautiful necropolis that is the Cementerio de la Recoleta. This place puts cemeteries at home to shame. It is in it's self a mini city. Massive marble graves that house generations of the one family. You can peerdown into the crypts and see coffin after coffin stacked in on racks that seem to go metres under ground. These crypts are topped with marble statues, inside the ground level many have plants and seats crosses and statues. In this cemetary lies one of the cities main icons Evita. It was amazing people seemed to make a beeline to see her grave and walked quickly by so many
Recoleta
This is a small example of the graves that are in this cemetry. more impressive graves. We spent a few hours wandering around here. We picked a great day to head here as they were setting up a huge market. Ahhh bliss love markets it does appear that bargaining is not the done thing here though as I think we offended a few people ba asking and attempting to bargain the prices. Our best attempt saved us $2... Prices in these markets do appear to be quite good though.
We got snap happy in the very touristy area of La Boca that is Caminito, a short pedestrian walkway that it lined with brightly coloured corrugated metal buildings. This area is another icon of Buenos Aires, it is full of tourist trap shops and shop that sell futbol gear. This aside the buildings are beautifully painted make for some good photos.
The highlight of our stay in Buenos Aries would have to be the Fútbol, on Sunday after browsing the San Telmo market we got picked up and taken to La Bombanera the yellow and blue stadium home to the Boca Juniors fútbol team. We were picked up by Glenn an Aussie/Argentinian who is a bit of a mad boca fan. We
were taken to the stadium passed security checks and pat downs the began climbing up the stairs around the stadium. The beauty of the stadium is that it has high steep sides but even at the highest point you are not far from the action. We decided against a standing ticket and opted for seats that did mean we were at the highest point one could get at this stadium but the view was great! We were seated just near the mad home crowds standing area. Now these fans do not do anything by half in this area there was a complete brass band and massive drums, for about 3 hours the supporters did not stop singing and gesturing with their arms at the small contingent of Independente fans (which were on the opposite side of the stadium on the top tier caged in). The only time their was a brief pause was just after Independiente scored the first goal of the game. Then the singing was renewed and songs were sung with even more gusto.
The final score was a good one for Boca 2-1. Which ment happy and excited crowds to walk down the stairs and out
of the stadium with.
The tango show was great, it was in a very art deco theatre, here we ate dinner and then watched the show. A beautiful mix of dancing and singing. The skill of the dancers was incredible, such beautiful movement.
One of the biggest things we have noticed is eating dinner before 8pm is almost unheard of! So in true porteños style we have adjusted and eaten like the locals... late. The food here has surprised us too pizza, pasta and hamburgers are in plentiful supply. But it is the parrilla that we have loved most, we ate at one place where slab after slab was carried past our table, and by slab we mean half a cow. The steak here is amazing!
What more can we say... We have had a wonderful start to our trip, the people here are so friendly, they don't mind our bumbling attempts at Spanish. People are very happy to offer help or directions, and we have loved our first week.
We are currently in a place that does not allow USB access to their computers and Renee is writing this on the IPad so we cannot
upload any photos at the moment, as soon as we can we will. We just really wanted to get this started and today we have time, (I will explain in the next post.).
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