Our plan was to take the open topped tourist bus round the city today. It was one of the hop on hop off types and the tickets were valid for 24 hours so we figured we could get to the further away places like La Boca and Palermo in the one day. La Boca was more of a working class area and had the colourful Caminito as well as Boca Junior's football stadium (the Pope's favourite team) while Palermo was the hip and trendy area.

Challenge number one of the day was finding the bus stop. We knew there should be a stop close to the theatre and we followed the route shown on the map round a full 3 block section, but couldn't see a stop or a bus for that matter. David decided to ask at the bicycle rental and were given some directions in broken English, "down towards the main road by the theatre and then on the left". Seemed simple enough especially when we saw one of the buses on the Avenida 9 de Mayo, the big wide street with dedicated bus lanes. We made our way to the bus platform but couldn't see signs for the tourist bus and then realised that the bus couldn't have been in the dedicated bus lane as it couldn't turn into the side streets that the route showed. David then decided to ask a policeman who pointed to the stop about 100m further down the road. Three pedestrian crossings later and a 100m walk down the street we finally found a very well disguised bus stop. We realised that we must have walked past it earlier before we even started our search and never noticed it.

The bus came within a few minutes and we hopped on but the price had increased by 100 pesos. The advertised price online (as of yesterday) was 170 pesos but now we were being asked to pay 260 pesos. Whether they were trying to cheat us or not, we weren't sure, but there was no way we were going to pay that for a ticket, so we hopped out again at the first set of traffic lights (we did check in the evening and the website price had been changed to 260 pesos... they sure know how to control pricing in Argentina!).

We were back at the pedestrian crossing we were at not 15 minutes earlier and ended up helping an old Argentinian lady to find the same bus stop we had just left, she had been walking round in circles as well. The old lady told us that Argentina has knack of always doing things badly for no reason. Hiding bus stops for a tourist bus certainly fitted into that category...

We decided that we would just walk to Palermo instead, we figured it might take an hour or so but we had time on our side and we would still get to see the neighbourhoods on the way. The most direct route was to walk on Avenida Santa Fe, a busy commercial street with shop after shop. After walking about 4km we came to the Alto Palermo shopping mall and went in for a look and to take advantage of their air conditioning. It was incredibly expensive though so definitely not worth buying anything, it was actually more pricey than in Europe for the same goods.

A little further up the road we saw heaps of dogs tied to a single lamppost. It looked very out of place on such a busy shopping street but then we noticed the dog walker a couple of doors away taking a dog back to its home and its owner.

After another kilometre of walking, the road and the pavement began to get noticably wider and the buildings didn't seem so overshadowing. There just seemed to be more open space and as if to prove a point, we came across the Botanical Gardens. Being free to the public, including tourists, we had a look around. There was nothing special compared to other gardens, but if did offer a bit of tranquility from the hustle and bustle of the nearby streets.

We crossed over Santa Fe and walked up Calle Gurruchaga towards Palermo Soho/Viejo, which had much more of a neighbourhood feel to it than the street we had been walking. Between Costa Rica and Gorriti, it almost had a village feel, with rows of busy restaurants and their terraced seating interspersed with little boutique shops.

The nearby Plaza Cortazar would be the area's nightlife centre. The plaza itself was packed with little handicraft stalls but it was surrounded on all sides by bars and clubs. Judging by the size of the beer delivery for just a single bar, it was easy to deduce this area would be pumping from late evening to sunrise.

We made our way back down Calle Borges to Plaza Italia by the Botanical Garden. The zoo was just across the road and we considered spending an hour or two there, but we then decided that we could spend 130 pesos more wisely especially when the extras, like animal talks/feeding, was only at the weekends.

Instead we walked to the nearby Museo Evita. The entry fee was a much more reasonable 40 pesos and allowed us to get to know a bit more about Argentina's most popular lady. Evita, or Eva Duarte as she was born, was an actress who happened to marry Perón, the man who would become President of the country. During the time of her husband's power she worked tirelessly improving conditions and laws for primarily women and children, but also for the lower classes in general. It was easy to see why she won the hearts of the majority of the nation and also some of the international communities. The museum wasn't very clear about what happened after her early death though. It seems that Perón went into exile in Spain and Evita's dead body was mutilated and buried in Italy by the military dictatorship. The body has since been returned to Argentina and buried in her family mausoleum in Recoleta. Evita still remains an icon for the country although there is still debate about the country never having recovered economically following Perón's (and Evita's) time in power.
A bit more enlightened, we walked back to our hotel on Avenida General Las Heras, it was a bit quieter than Santa Fe, which was probably because it had more apartments than shops. The Avenue ended at Plaza Vicente Lopez, a smallish park that was the hub of activity for all the kids that lived in the surrounding apartments. It was a proper inner city park, it was full of fenced off play parks for all ages and plenty of open, tree shaded, space for the adults too.

After our long walk in the heat, we quite fancied an ice cream but just our luck, we didn't run into any real ice cream shops, where we could sit down, anywhere between the Plaza and our hotel. As a consolation, we visited the shop across the street from the hotel and found some ice cold cider in their fridge. Along with some chips, it would carry us over until we went out for the evening dinner show we had booked yesterday.

When you're backpacking for 9 months, it's not easy to have a big wardrobe to be able to suit all occasions. We had booked for the tango show at El Viejo Almacen including a pre-show dinner and felt we ought to dress up smartly. That wasn't really an option though especially for David - a clean t-shirt, jeans and tramping shoes (as opposed to jandals) was the best he could muster.

Our hotel had arranged the evening for us and even managed to get us a discounted price. For 75 US dollars each, instead of the advertised $100, we would get transfers, a 3 course dinner with wine, and drinks during the tango show which would last for about 1.5 hours. The catch was it had to be paid in cash, but we fortunately had some spare.

The pickup arrived promptly at 7:30pm and we were a bit taken aback by Argentinian family seated in front of us - they were dressed up like they might be going to meet the Queen before the ballet. The next few couples to join us put us more at ease though, they were dressed similar to us and obviously on the backpacker circuit too.

Dinner was surprisingly good, we hadn't got our hopes up just in case it was a rushed serving of pre-made food. We were given a nice bottle of Trapiche Malbec wine and water while we looked over the menu, there were 3 or 4 choices for each course. Maria decided on little canapes and David went a bit more 'local' by having empanadas to start with. We both decided on a sirloin steak with potatoes and green salad which was both a good cut of meat and expertly cooked to our liking. In this part of the world, it's hard not to choose something other than a dulce de leche based dessert, so when there was dulce de leche ice cream on offer, how could we resist. Although the meal was prepaid, the waiter wasn't shy about letting us know that a tip would be appreciated. We had already heard about other's experiencing this so it wasn't a surprise and to be fair, they guy had done a very good job keeping his distance, but coming in at the right time to fill glasses and clear plates.

After dinner we had to cross the street from the restaurant to the show venue. We had a very small table reserved for us with our name on it. It was on the side wall but near the front and had a good view of the stage. It wasn't long before a waitress came round and took our drinks order (which was included in our package). David went onto beer while Maria stuck with wine although the wine was not nearly as good as the one we'd had for dinner. There was also an option to have 'champagne', which most people went for, but we decided not to because no doubt it would be worse than the cheap wine they were dishing out. Drink refills slowed down to near nonexistent once the show got underway, even during the intermission. Being on the aisle though it was easy enough for David to grab them on the way past to order more. It did seem however that without tipping the waitress beforehand the drinks would not materialise.

We managed our fair share of drinks though compared to those sitting around us before they finally gave up serving.

The show seemed quite professional, at least to us, and it included 4 tango dancer couples, a band with six members and a female singer that we thought was very good even if TripAdvisor reviews didn't rate her so well. There was also a male singer although he seemed to be more of a compare and a very good Andean folk band.

There was no encore, once the show finished we were ushered out the building to our waiting transport to take us to our hotel. The driver did offer to drop us off at a couple of nightlife spots in the city, but being close to midnight we all declined in favour of our beds.