Buenos Aires - First Look
We were able to sleep in a bit today as we didn’t need to be ready until 9 when we were getting our guided tour of BA. Eileen was our guide & Mario was our driver.
Madero, the area we are staying in, was the second port in the city, but only lasted a short time aka #PortFail, since the channel was too narrow. The river that goes through the city is not very deep, but at its largest before it gets to the Atlantic ocean it is 220 km wide. Madero is now one of the newest areas of the city. It is expensive, but not yet densely populated.
We crossed the channel and were able to get a good look at Woman’s Bridge which was designed by a famous architect and was inspired by tango dancers.
On the other side of the water we saw the former Post Office, now cultural museum with a great statue of a warrior woman in front. That is when Eileen told me not to take photos out of the window so that someone would not drive by and snatch my phone.
We saw the Monumental Tower, which the clock is a replica of Big Ben. This used to be called the English Tower, but after the war with Britian in 1982, they renamed landmarks like this to erase the English names.
We headed to the Northern part of town, Recoleta. We saw a a famous statue of a guy’s torso by the Columbian artist that does all the chubby people. Eileen interprets it as the Argentinian men and their macho arrogance!
We stopped and walked up to the Flower statue was made out of airplane aluminium. The flower is a generic one to represent all flowers of Argentina. It is very expensive to open and close, so it does not happen very often.
We entered the largest district Palermo, it is now known as the embassy district. It used to be large family homes in the French style, Belle epoch. French architects were hired by wealthy families who left the centre of the city after yellow fever outbreak and built massive homes outside the core.
We stopped to see a statue of Sanmartiniano, the founder BA, with his grandchildren.
We drove by MALBA - Latin American art museum, Eileen highly recommend this because of its unique works.
The forest of Palermo area has lots of parks and man made lakes, including the 2nd largest Japanese garden outside of Japan. In this area was a large white monument from the Spaniards, along the bottom was a represention of the great regions in Argentina and the upper portion represented the friendship between Argentina and Spain.
We walked up to the monument of Eva Peron. It is located at the site of their home that was removed and replaced with Brutalism (ugly) style building.
We toured the famous old cemetery that was refurbished in 1881 to make it look like a city (in a grid). We walked around and visited some of the lavish crypts. It was pretty impressive. Eva Peron and other dignitaries were buried here. Then we also toured the Roman Catholic church located beside the cemetery, the style was very similar to some we saw in Cuba last year with very ornate gold decor and brightly painted ceramic tiles on the walls.
In the park across the street we saw a great example of how they hold up the Gomero tree branches with pillars. Some of the pillars are unique, like the one in the shape of a man holding up a the tree.
The famous 9th avenue is home to the Hyatt hotel and the Vatican, Brazil and French embassies; all part of the belle epoch style. The widest part of this avenue has 18 lanes.
We drove by the Opera House which was finished in 1946 by 3 architects (because 2 died during the construction) and an Obelisk which is a site of celebrations.
It was very busy because there were 2 demonstrations. There can be up to 8 demonstrations per day as the people of Buenos Aires are very politically active.
We had some time to walk around the Banking District to see the main square, the former fortress and now Plaza de Mayor, Catholic Church, & Nacional Capildo.
We drove through the Tango district where we will be having dinner and a show this evening. This used to be an area where immigrants landed in Buenos Aires from Italy, Africa and Spain. Men arrived first and save money to bring their wives and families to the country. So it was only natural that this was an area with brothels. Tangos were used to entertain the men while waiting for their companions. Men would challenge each other to a “tango fight” and the winner would get to enter the brothel first.
Southern part is poorer area, La Boca, which means mouth. It was the first port of the city. We learned about the Boca Juniors soccer team and drove by their stadium. Visiting teams are not allowed to purchase tickets and alcohol is not served in stadiums in order to keep the voilence to a minimum.
We had 30 min to wander around the open air museum (craft and art market), cafes and tango dancers. We saw lots of graffiti and houses made from corrugated materials from the shipyards painted in different colours. I purchased a bracelet that has the gauchos print (Cross Palermo?) and my cow hide clutch.
Eileen & Mario dropped us off at Gran Parrilla del Plata for lunch. We had an awesome lunch we shared Entraña, skirt steak which she said was this places specialty with arugula salad and Malbec wine! All awesome!!
After lunch we walked around the antique district and stopped at Cafe Tortoni for a drink (Pisco Sour) and ice cream (very famous due to the Italian influence and due to the cattle in Argentina). Dulce de leche is the most popular flavour, so we had some added to our vanilla ice cream.
Eileen also recommended Galleria Guemes on 169 Florida, but we did not check it out.
We then made our way to the National Cathedral which was as impressive as almost any in Europe. The cathedral had tons of marble and gold. Afterward, we walked back to our hotel and I had a nap before dinner.
We were picked up at 7:15 and were at Gala Tango by 7:20. We were the first to arrive and were told that we were 40 min early. So, we were given a free tango lesson to kill some time. It was a lot of fun and I think we did a pretty good job (until we saw the pros do it)!
We had seats right beside the stage and were treated very well by Leo and Kelyne. We had empanadas, tomato and boconcini, steaks and poached pears with ice cream and custard with a Malbec wine for dinner.
The show began at 10pm. It was a very impressive show with a 5 piece band, 9 dancers, 2 singers and another musician that performed during a couple of sections of the show. The dancers were by far my favourite part. They were so amazing to watch and a far cry from the simple 8 steps we had recently learned!
It was a late night and we had an early morning, so we headed back to the hotel, packed a few things and headed to bed.