March 02 - Buenos Aires

One of our favorite things to do when we visit a city for the first time is to take the Hop On Hop Off bus tour.  Buenos Aires has a very  enjoyable service that takes you to all the major neighbourhoods in the metropolitan area.

Our first stop was the San Talmo neighbourhood.  This area is filled with funky antiques and craft shops.  There is also a large farmers market.  San Telmo is the oldest barrio in Buenos Aires.  It is a well preserved area and is characterized by its old colonial buildings and cobblestone streets.

Shopping in San Talmo

San Talmo Court Yard

Farmer's Market

Our next stop was in La Boca.  If you follow soccer there is a world famous club that calls this area its home.   Because it was original settled by fishermen this area has lots in common with cities such as St. Johns in Newfoundland, Curaçao in the Caribbean or Burano Italy.  The homes are brightly coloured and there are a lot of bars and restaurants.

At the bus stop there was a fascinating sculpture by Chinese artist Al Weiwei made entirely of chrome bicycles. When you look at the sculpture it appears that it is radiating light rays from the center.

As we entered the area, we were stopped by a street busker who persuaded me to dress up as a tango dancer and had a series of pictures taken of me pretending to dancing with her.  It was very humourous and great fun.  

Our last stop was Recoleta.  It has a world famous cemetery.  There is an amazing array of crypts and monuments. It contains the graves of notable people, including Eva Perón, past presidents of Argentina, Nobel Prize winners and a granddaughter of Napoleon.  One thing we noticed was many of the vaults had not been kept up and it appeared that some may have been robbed. 

For dinner we went to a nice restaurant near our hotel called Museo del Jamon.  We are quickly making Malbec wines our favourite wine and had two bottles between Catherine and Gil and ourselves.

This was followed by a Tango dance show at Café Los Angelitos.  The dancers were very athletic with quick feet and amazing chorography.  I’ve never watched Dancing with Stars but I suspect they would be hard pressed to keep up with Tango dancers.  Unfortunately the orchestra was seriously out of tune.  It sounded as if all the members were playing in a different key.  It happened so often that I’m wondering if may this is their style.