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Published: September 19th 2007
After nearly 2 weeks in our first city, we have decided to move on. We will be leaving Buenos Aires behind and going north to Uruguay. Buenos Aires has been quite an experience. It is a large city that takes a good few days to get your head around. Strangely, there does not tend to be massive crowding of people on the streets (unlike e.g. London´s Oxford Street on a saturday afternoon). The sights are mostly well spread out and so you find yourself doing a lot of walking each day. This of course suits us both well though, so no complaints here! The other significant difference to note is that this is very much a "new world" city. The streets almost all follow a grid pattern and it can be difficult to work out the delinations of different districts. I guess I am used to older European cities where there is a fairly easy way of seeing the old city and the new city. Of course Buenos Aires did not really exist before the Spanish came here and so its history is decidedly short.
However, once you get over the initial confusion, and accept that there are cars pretty
It´s been raining...
... and this is a very big puddle!much everywhere, the city really comes alive. And in fact you can start to differentiate between the different areas. As I mentioned in my previous blog, our favourite area is San Telmo. It is very much the arty part of the city and just has the best bars you could hope for. We have also enjoyed walking in some of the parks in the city, although my dislike of dogs has not been helped by the professional dog-walkers going by with their 20 canines on one lead! I would also rate the Recoleta Cemetary very highly (despite the fact that it is full of dead people) and we have seen some great museums.
Of course Buenos Aires has also been the site of my discovery of the Spanish language. Now, I am far, very far, from fluency but I certainly understand and can speak more Spanish now than when I arrived. My extremely patient teachers Silvia (1st week) and Pedro (2nd week) should be given medals for putting up with me. ¡Muchas gracias!
It is hard to believe that our time in BA is already up. When we were planning this trip and talking about "when we get
to Buenos Aires..", I never actually considered saying "when we leave Buenos Aires.." and won´t get to see it again all year. But still, I have a feeling that there are many amazing places to be seen and this has just been the tip of the iceberg.
My recommendations:
Place for food or just a drink: El Federal, at the corner of Peru and Carlos Calvos.
Hostel: Garden House, San Telmo.
Open space: Botanic Gardens, Palermo.
Place to see tango: San Telmo on a sunday (because it is free).
Food: Steak or milanesa.
Drink: Red wine, of course!
What to watch out for: Subway thieves!
So, that is is, we leave Argentina for now and head to countries new. But we´ll be back to this country (although not Buenos Aires), just give us a month or so...
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barrygahan
Barry
Love the puddle picture, don´t remember you taking that one!