Buenos After All - Blogabond

Determined to improve on the bad start, we set out on the Time Out Origins walking tour, Joanne had copied down from the magazine in the hostel. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city; I don't know why we even wasted our time on Cordoba, but even here there seems to be loads of (re-?)construction and graffiti, which does a lot to make Argentina seem shabby and negate the impact of such a gorgeous place. The old cars, at least, seem to be in better condition in Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires

Casa Rosada

Malivinas (Argentina) Veterans

Roof of famous pharmacy

Famous pharmacy

At one point we were tailed by a dodgy-looking character, but he must have just been waiting for an opportunity when one of us dropped our guard and gave him a second to steal a bag or something, because when we stopped and turned around to look at him from the other side of the road, he lingered for a few seconds before turning and heading back the way we had come.

Representative of a lot of Bs As

Nice church

Bs As

The buildings aren't all nice

Good graffiti

So-called bife de chorizo

Clearly not learning our lesson, we tried again at the bife de chorizo. Maybe we were just unlucky the previous day. It was cheaper here, but still considerably more than the excellent one we had in Mendoza. This time the meat was nicer, but it didn't look like the same cut we'd had in Mendoza and it was over-done. Since it was quite nice, we didn't feel too bad until we realised everyone around us was ordering the same as us, and they were getting the real deal: big fat, juicy steaks, all done to perfection, just like the legendary Mendoza steaks.

Joanne's slightly better bife de chorizo

We had been given the gringo cut! Lunch went from being quite nice but not great, to being really annoying. I think other people were starting to wonder what I was staring at, all the time I spent looking longingly at their plates. At the end of the meal, the waitress, who hadn't spoken any English so far, came up with the bill and said “Tip not included”. The steak might not be as nice in Chile, but at least the people are polite! To her back I said “bife de chorizo not included, more like”.

A cheesy Ford

Another banger

The cerveza artesanal place just around the corner didn't have any tap beers on, so it was more of the insipid Argentinian bottled beer, which is only a small step up from American mass-market beers like Bud. We gave up and went back to the hostel, me to blog, Joanne to watch films.

Middle-of-the-road graffiti

The next day, we planned to see much more of the city by taking the open-top city bus tour. We had some trouble finding the nearest stop to hop on at, which is at the Palacio del Congreso building. There is a huge monument to los Dos Congresos outside the building, which is entirely surrounded by a high fence, presumably to prevent this one monument from being vandalised. It seems a bit sad. We could not find the bus stop and had to walk all the way to the kiosk at the start of the tour.

It was absolutely perishing on the top of that bus, but we made it all the way round the route once. We had been planning then to stay on and hop off somewhere we liked, stay for a while then hop back on again, but we were too cold to face any longer on the bus by then. There was so much more to the city than we had seen on foot, and I think to properly appreciate the city would take about a week, but a taster is all we're getting of South America, so we couldn't hand around.

Widest road in the world (apparently)

There were several entire large districts we hadn't even explored and which all looked lovely as well, from the modern (and pleasant) re-development of the old port, to La Boca, still quite rough, originally a neighbourhood of poor, mostly Italian, immigrants. Apparently there is a different dialect associated with that part of the city, which at one point was very similar to Genoese. La Boca is obviously going through some regeneration and it seems to have a great cafe culture, as well as theatres, and plenty of pretty buildings.

The redeveloped waterfront

What a lovely city and what a shame we were leaving the next day.

written by

The Happy Couple on September 29, 2009 from Buenos Aires, Argentina

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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