Buenos Aires - Liveliest Destination
Trip Start
Feb 23, 2008
1
6
Trip End
Apr 03, 2008
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Our Animoto Video - http://animoto.com/play/xlKJXgoRkwZo1cLJIdGadw
Final entry
March 25th to April 3rd, 2008
We'll try something a little different for this entry. Below, Sophie has reflected on Buenos Aires after her two separate visits and Margaret has added some thoughts she had as she reviewed some of the hundreds of photos from the trip. The contributions will be blended but you'll be able to tell the author of each part by the (MS) or (SM) that follows the entry.
Where We Were
Buenos Aires is one of the largest cities in the world with over 14 million people in its 48 barrios and the central district. We had no trouble believing that fact.
What We Saw and Did
Jim and I had been in BA at the beginning of February and we noticed a few differences two months later when South Americans were no longer on holidays. Our original impression was noise, chaos amid masses of humanity. Now there are less sales clerks accosting you to come into their stores, there are no small children or mothers with babies begging on the streets, the constant honking and reckless driving is minimal, there is a puzzling absence of loose dogs in places like the train station, and the open season on pedestrians by drivers seems to have ended (the turning taxis now actually let us proceed on the walk signal). Harry asked if we could have just been overwhelmed in our first impression of a city of 6 million but we assured him that these are actual changes. (SM)
We spent the entire week in Buenos Aires with our eight eyes wide open. We didn't want to miss the architecture, statues in the plazas, colors, art, exotic flowering trees, wide streets filled with traffic or anything else that set this place apart from home. (Neither did we want to fall on uneven sidewalks or get caught in the path of a maniac driver.) We were reminded of some of the huge European cities with their many diverse neighborhoods that make it hard to describe such a place in one paragraph.
The plazas are plentiful and well used in central Buenos Aires. Lots of them feature enormous statues of political and military heroes including Harry's favorite, Bernard O'Higgins. In many of the parks, we enjoyed watching the dog walkers managing a pack of compliant hounds. We're going to write the Canadian government to ask that they think about injecting some new and inspiring life into the Canada Plaza. It's in a busy location by the Central Train Station where thousands of people pass every day .
We stayed our first four nights at the Palermo Viejo B&B which we had found using TripAdvisor. Our host, Ariel was no exception to our experience of having good hosts. He helped us find preferred restaurants and wisely advised us on our activities for each day. Staying in Palermo was a very good decision. Besides being a safe and bustling neighborhood, it seemed to have the very best shopping and restaurant choices in town. Rather than move to San Telmo as we originally planned for our last four nights in Buenos Aires, we asked Ariel if we could stay with him but he was booked already. Characteristically, he spent a fair bit of time finding us a good alternative nearby. (MS)
One evening our B&B host, Ariel invited us to the first night of an art exhibit featuring the work of his friend, Sylvia Flichman.
Her art adorned our bedroom walls while we were at the Palmero Viejo B&B and the Jacaranda. We enjoyed this evening completely. See Sylvia Flichman's blog at http://silviaflichman.blogspot.com/
Recoleta Cemetery is one of the biggest attractions in Buenos Aires and we mean that literally. The cemetery takes up nearly six hectares with its collection of large and small mausoleums. We spent about an hour strolling around, which in retrospect, wasn't enough. We were generally fascinated by the variety of marble tributes and were surprised by the ordinariness of the mausoleum of Eva Peron, the actress turned president. You can see who else is buried in Recoleta at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Recoleta_Cemetery You may notice that Eva's husband Juan Peron was excluded from the Recoleta Cemetery. (MS)
We wandered daily through green spaces containing amazing sculptures, statues, fountains and in some instances, large numbers of feral cats. We stumbled into old buildings with free museums or ended up in a place that claimed to be a decorative art museum but was a marvelous French mansion with a visiting Italian costume display. We also visited MALBA museum which is actually an art gallery that contained some of the same Latin American art as we saw in the Mendosa winery. (SM)
On our fifth night in Palermo we moved to a small apartment called the Jacaranda for the remainder of our stay. The hosts came over to meet us and to give us local information about Palermo and Tigre. Once again, remarkable hospitality. The personalized list of restaurants they gave us came in handy although it sure didn't help us locate our favorite Mexican restaurant from several evenings earlier. (MS)
The day at El Tigre, an area one hour outside of BA, included train rides and a public transport boat trip down rivers in a huge delta where there are no roads to a lunch at a classy restaurant in a beautiful treed setting.
We attended the famous San Telmo Sunday antiques market which had street tango dancing and bands and some good quality artisans (see Margaret's purse) amidst the regular junk. We took a cab to the Boca area of colorful houses.
On our last half day in BA Jim passed on a trip to the National Belles Arts Museum (actually an art gallery). Marg was not feeling great, but Harry and I finally made it to the museum and discovered a gem that required more time than we had. It will end up being one of our few regrets of BA. (SM)
As Sophie mentioned, only she and Harry visited the National Museum of Fine Arts (Bellas Artes) which has one of the largest art collections in South America and features the work of famous European as well as significant Latin American artists. That museum was unexpectedly closed the day we initially went there. What a disappointment. The guard told us that all of the employees had taken the day off, unannounced, to attend a Cristina Kirschner rally. President Cristina had been under attack in recent weeks because she supported some sort of new taxation on soy and other farm products that were being exported. That decision resulted in protest road blocks that prevented trucks from delivering farm products into large cities around the country. I guess I'll have to settle for the gallery web site http://www.mnba.org.ar/ . That or go back to BA again which sounds like a good idea :) By the way, the strikers were appeased and road blocks removed the last day we were in the country. A day too late, in my opinion. Oddly enough, we were always able to get meats and fruits at every restaurant even though the local butcher shops were without product. (MS)
On the last morning in South America, our favorite local breakfast coffee shop was closed due to the Argentinian Malvinas Day holiday (When we crossed the border from Chile into Argentina on our way to El Chalten, we had seen signs proclaiming that the Falklands aka Malvinas belong to Argentina).
There were some minor health issues that showed up at the end of our holidays. We occasionally had to scout out bano locations. Marg got a cold and Sophia's runny nose and clogged sinuses meant she tasted nothing in the last 4 days. These will be minor things that won't even be remembered in the bigger picture.
I was asked if there were any difficulties making decisions and traveling with 4 people. We have so many of the same interests that destination decisions were never an issue. On occasion, we went our separate ways... Jim chose not to visit one gallery, I spent a few hours by myself in the Japanese garden and went solo to a tango show, and not all of us went out for all the late large dinners as 4 hunger levels vary throughout the day. Certainly with 4 of us, there is the increased possibility of one of us catching a conniving taxi driver. Harry caught a cabbie telling him his legit 50 peso bill was counterfeit and then sneakily trying to exchange it with another. On another occasion, Margaret fortunately had noticed the meter reading near the end of a ride just before the machine "inexplicably" malfunctioned.
From the time we left our BA apartment for the airport until we were driving home on Winnipeg streets, elapsed time was 24 hours. That meant lots of tossing and turning in uncomfortable airplane seats, watching movies, completing journals and Sophia getting a chance for a wonderful 30 minute visit with her brother in the Toronto airport. Jim and Sophia had no problems and both agree that the long flights are not yet a deterrent to this kind of travel. (SM)
Ditto for the Stimsons... long flights are no problem as long as the destinations are as worthwhile as Chile and Argentina. And now we're home, richer for the experience. Great trip!! We are four very lucky people. (MS)
Where I stayed
