Blogs from La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina, South America - page 3

Life gets off to a slow start in this part of the world and Sunday is a day where life is leisurely. If you are a young person its likely that you only got home from going out around 6am so sleep until midday or more is common. So around 3pm we went to the San Martin Plaza to have a look at the markets. This plaza is one of the large ones, there is a huge bus interchange area here as well as government buildings. On Sunday there is a craft market. These markets are on each Sunday from midday until 10pm. The stalls are all set up by the council and the stall holders are of the alternative type, more dreadlocks here than at a Rastafarian festival. The stall holders given the well set ... read more

Because La Plata is a uni town there are lots of apartments, little flats, tiny one room pésiones in the city area and out in the suburbs single houses and yards. Buildings are old or new or inbetween, anything seems to go, cheek by jowl, there does not seem to be any sort of plan to keep old in one are and new in another. Most places seem neat and tidy from the outside, with gates and walls surrounding most places and entry only by key or buzzer. ... read more

Cars seem to be neat and tidy or wreckars yard models which are still out and about. There are motorbikes and lots of bikes, no helmets of course, and no bike paths so they just take their chances. Indicating is not on the priority list of most car drivers, and giving way is sort of done by lets all approach and see who is going to go first. All quite gentle and calm. Parking is anywhere you can fit you car, so nose to nose, footpath, or even on the corner. Lots of scratches when buses have a little scrape as they try to get around corners. Police are not a huge prescence, but are around. Traffic jams involve lots of horn blowing and posturing. The city has tree lined streets, some cobbled areas and a ... read more

Another travel adventure has started with me visiting my daughter who lives in Argentina. So budget air line Aerolineas Argentinas took me to La Plata, small plane, but had nice travelling companions and 2 glasses of red wine and i can sleep anywhere. Arrived and followed a 2 page list of instructions to get to Hannah in La Plata which is one hour from Buenos Aires. First i had to get my luggage including a guitar which was travelling fragile, well it was supposed to be but it was on the converyor belt with all the other stuff, had my packback which had Hannahs oboe worth $5000-, 26 kgs of luggage in my suitcase, again mostly Hannahs and found my way through customs and to the first step. Buy one bus ticket to the big bus ... read more

Street Corners 1 Calle 6 / Avenida 51 La Plata (Argentina) 15 November 2009 16:20 I had spent the afternoon exploring the plazas and churches of La Plata, the state capital of Buenos Aires province. I was now beside a bench in the Plaza San Martin. In front of me were the main government offices, housed in an ornate whitewashed building decorated with sme occasional reddish brown brickwork. The construction was fairly recent, but its formal aspects of pillars and roofing were drawn from the European Renaissance while the elaborate and more unusual features around the windows were distinctly Flemish in origin. This was the main square in the city, named after General San Martin, The Liberator, who had led South American to independence from the Spanish in the 1820s. Streets and plazas all over Argentina ... read more