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Published: December 10th 2005
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Buenos Aires
See all the cars? That's why they call it Good Air. (Actually the air is pretty good considering) We’d finally arrived: Buenos Aires, Paris of South America. We found a place in San Telmo, an older area of the city not far from down town. The whole place is full of Georgian buildings with crumbling molding and balconies of overgrown house plants. And the streets are cobbled.
The first thing we did was go to Calle Florida, where all the shopping is. To Mike’s infinite delight, there was also a Subway. I must say, that we did buy a lot of shoes while in Buenos Aires, and now our bags are very heavy. You can get very nice stuff in Buenos Aires, and it’s all about half the price we would pay at home, so almost impossible to resist.
On Saturdays, there is a craft market outside the cemetery in Recoleta (a fancy part of town) and I got up early in order to be sure of seeing it. Unfortunately, it turned out that we were being evicted from our hotel that day, and had to find a new one. Ok no problem. Then we wandered for ages trying to find the right bus and it was very much the afternoon by the time we got there.
The market was still going though, and I bought more shoes.
We also visited the cemetery, which has many famous people, most importantly Eva Peron. The cemetery was pretty great, all the tombs being above ground and some very old and crumbling with little plants all over them. Also, there was a thunderstorm, so it was extra spooky. Evita’s grave was pretty fancy black marble and seems to be of her parents’ rather than here husband’s family. Each family has a chapel-like thing where several deceased family members are stored together. We had to wait our turn to take a picture.
After that, we went to a movie at the big fancy movie theater (Harry Potter, what else?). It must have had twenty screens and had shows until 2:30am. Even though it was afternoon, there was a large lineup and about eight cashers working. They let you pick your seats when you buy the ticket, very novel for us. We went and had some pasta before the movie in a very fancy food court attached to the theater. Many of the “menus del dia” included wine.
As if that wasn’t enough for one day, we went out
Boo!
This is the cemetario in BA. Very crazy place with many interesting old tombs. that night to a bar across the street from our hostel, which had a real live rock and roll band! Ok, it was sad white-boy blues with copious guitar solos, but still. The best part was when the waiter got up and sang a few songs.
On Sundays there is an antiques market in the square in San Telmo. It was pretty expensive, and mostly junk, but still fun. All kinds of street performers came, including a guy on stilts, an organ grinder with a parrot, a puppeteer with a little stage, several tango dancers and an orchestra (including piano).
Tuesday night we went to the opera, “Capriccio”, in the Teatro Colon which is really old and once very famous. Since the opera was in German with subtitles in Spanish and we couldn’t afford seats where you can see the whole stage, we had little idea what was happening. (I read the plot beforehand though, and really nothing does happen.) Everything else was fabulous though. We were up pretty high and had a good view of the fancier seats and all the crazy decorations and we could see the orchestra pretty well. Also, and most importantly, we got
Espresso
You order a "coffee" here and you get an espresso. Heaven! (This was a particularly good one) to dress up.
The next morning we left on a short trip to Colonia, Uruguay. Uruguay is just across the river and there’s a really odd ferry service from Buenos Aires. I swear we had to wait in four different lines just to buy tickets. Then, we also had to get there an hour before sailing time to “check in” and go through customs. The ferry itself at least had reclining (if pretty dirty) seats and it took us (on the slow cheap boat) three hours to cross. Colonia is a laid back touristy place with cobbled streets, old buildings, and more restaurants than I’ve ever seen in one place. Our hostel had free bikes and we had a pretty great time biking around looking for a good bakery. Unfortunately the only ferry we could take back the next day was at 4:30am. BC Ferries is looking better all the time.
Back in B.A. we had a whole day to kill until our bus to Mendoza and spent it mostly at the zoo. The zoo was pretty impressive, as it is very old and many of the buildings and enclosures are covered in decorative molding and wrought iron.
The Colon
A great name for a beautiful opera theater, no? The zoo keepers had put up Christmas trees and other decorations in the larger enclosures and the Andean bears had already destroyed their fake Christmas presents. They had a really amazing range of animals there, including two very depressed polar bears.
We also went to the botanical gardens next door, which are eerie and overgrown, and also completely overrun with feral house cats. The cats are very friendly and old ladies would come and feed them cat food out of plastic bags as if they were pigeons. There was a “no dogs allowed” sign on the park gate.
That’s it for Buenos Aires, and I guess “we had a great time, ate good food and bought lots of cheap shoes” makes for pretty boring reading, but we just can’t be risking our necks in thrilling feats of daring all the time now can we.
Kathleen
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Rough
non-member comment
Real Music
At least it was real music and not recorded. Music is an activity, not a "product".