Buenos Aires - The End of the Adventure

This is the last blog of our Westies Go West Adventure, and our last day in Buenos Aires.  The whole thing has been a blast and we have enjoyed every minute of it.

We left BA on election day, waking up to the sound of gunfire and explosions.  Of course it wasn't anything of the sort, just fire crackers, but a 7.30 am!  Our taxi driver turned up early and hussled us to the taxi, anxious to get out of the city centre.  Barricades had been erected in Plaza Mayo the previous day and a rally was starting up around the corner from the hotel.... so probably a good time to go.

We'll be back!

Some pictures to end on.

Sculpture that opens in the morning and closes at night

Only image of Eva Peron that we saw

A typical pavement in San Telmo

A church in San Telmo

Not exactly Picadilly Circus

Nisman - a murder disguised as suicide

A loathed President

Needs a TV restoration project

Signing off for this year! hope you have enjoyed it, we certainly did.
We will be returning next year with Westies Go East

Buenos Aires 3

We did two totally different things today.

In the morning we took a guided tour of the Opera House.  I would very much have liked to go to a performance, but as usual my timing and planning was way out, and I discovered after I had booked the flights that it was closed for the summer season, and opening a week after we leave.   Hurrumph.

It was quite beautiful.

We couldn't take pictures in the main auditorium because there was a rehearsal going on.  Instead and more brilliant we got to listen to the rehearsal for half an hour.

After lunch we walked over to Puerto Madero, like our docklands area and just walked for hours. A nice change to the crowded streets.

Buenos Aires 8

This morning it was the Recoleta Cemetery which is located in the upmarket barrio of Recoleta.  We jumped the metro and walked across the park to the cemetery.

Eva Peron is either revered or loathed here.  We thought there would be more feel of her in the city, but no, we only saw one picture outside the cemetery.  During the junta her body was stolen by the generals and only returned later, with the threat of death if they didn't reveal where she was.  She should never have been buried at Recoleta, which is a only for rich people.  Eva was a bastard from a bigamist marriage, whose father never acknowledged here.  Instead she is now buried under 30 feet of concrete and steel in her uncles crypt. It took a while to find the tomb and it isn't marked.

The cemetery is strange place, still used by the wealthy families of BA.  Some crumbling crypts but the rest renovated.  Lots of Art Nouveau statues, and one very modern tomb.  A bit weird wandering around but absolutely fascinating.

After the cemetery we walked through the park and visited the Japanese Park, which was the complete opposite.  A lovely quiet space for a couple of hours before walking back to the centre of town.

We collapsed into our bar in San Telmo for a well earned beer.  Opposite the bar is a statue of Mafalda.  Mafalda is the Argentian equivalent of Snoopy, and all day people are sitting by her being photographed.

and as you walk round the area, other characters, If think are scattered around.  Brilliant.

Buenos Aires 7

Today we thought we would go up market and we figured out how to use the metro and took ourselves over to the barrio of Palermo, which is one of the more upmarket inner city areas.

But first we detoured to see a bookshop called Ateno which was converted from an old Opera House.  It is now the biggest bookshop in Argentina, wonderful! but all in Spanish of course.  We are so lucky over here that our books are relatively cheap.  Over here they are double the price.  We saw one of  Jamie Oliver's cookbooks for about $60 (£40) and an ordinary paperback would be £15 upwards.

We could have stayed there all day just browsing all those books in such a wonderful setting, and I presume a lot of people do.  Instead we had a coffee on the stage and watched the world go by.

Right!  Dogs..... The Argentinians love dogs and everyone has one or more.  In the poorer areas strays or people with rather large ones and in the richer areas, little fluffy ones.  They are everywhere, and one of BA's problems is dog shit everywhere, a bit like Paris.  They obviously don't have the laws we do, and you have to be careful where you are stepping.

But they do have dog walkers and you see them everywhere.

We saw this guy later on in the park.  He had staked the dogs individually, and then let one go, played with him for five minutes, and then the next and then the next.  Full days work.  But you could tell he was top dog, and he cleared up after them.  I hope he got paid well.
 

Palermo turned out to be the Chelsea of BA and we wandered around the streets for a couple of hours, full of small restaurants, designer shops and squares.  Would be a nice place to stay if we ever came back.

And then we walked back through Mayfair, or so it seemed.  Small apartment blocks and clear side walks. Someone has a lot of money over here.

Funny name for a restaurant

Anyway a great day.

BA rain.  Everywhere you walk in BA you get drops of water on your head.  We kept thinking it was raining and then realised that it was coming from all the air conditioning units on the shops and apartments.  You constantly have to dodge the water

So tango.  Saw quite a log of dancing wandering around the streets, usually in restaurants.  Lovely

But we decided that we were going to see some proper tango and booked ourselves on a tango show and dinner in an old turn of the century cafe called Cafe Angelika.  It showed an intimate setting with small tables in front of the stage.  Of course if was a rip off, not individual tables but long rows of tables of about 30 settings shoved together right up to the stage.  Waiter threw the food down at you as they passed.  The food was passable.  Unfortunately we were right in front of the stage which meant you had to look up 8 ft to the stage and spent the whole show with views of their knickers.  Really disappointed it was a completely lie.

But the dancing was good, but next time, I would go out to the outlaying barrios and visit a Milonga instead.