Hola de Buenos Aires!
Having Saturday 26 March is not to be recommended, I felt completely dead on arrival in BA! Instead of sleeping on the plane I watched movies: The King's Speech; The Girl who Played with Fire; The Social Network; and Love and Other Drugs. All really good and totally different. Other entertainment was provided by the two Aussie guys sitting next to me (Jarrod and Lachy) spilling drinks everywhere and managing not to get cut off by the very old male air stewards!
After sleeping for about 16 hours straight I woke up ready to face Sunday in BA. As it has been since I arrived, the sky was completely clear and a daytime 22 degrees - perfect for walking around and sightseeing. I started the day by walking the main tourist areas in the Microcentro, popping in for a tour at the Teatro Colon and the Presidential Palace.
The Teatro Colon is BA's opera house which is rated as one of the best opera houses in the world. It is also huge, with a capacity of 3,000 people. It took around 20 years to build, being completed in 1908. The reasons for the delay were due to the fact that most of the building materials were shipped from Europe and secondly the building of the opera house was not good luck for the architects involved. The first two died during the project, the second being murdered! The theatre is renowned for its perfect acoustics. When Pavarotti sang at Teatro Colon he commented that performers had no option of being less than perfect as every member of he audience would hear every wrong note. The opening opera of this season was a modern (1972) opera called La Macabre - the set design looked seriously odd!!! Other interesting points in the auditorium are: the circular balcony around the chandelier on the ceiling on which singers and musicians can perform to represent music coming from the heavens; and the grills on the orchestra stalls level where widows in mourning could stay hidden to watch the performance.
The pink presidential palace tour was interesting. Lots of art of influential Latino figures and an opportunity to stand on the balcony made famous by Eva "Evita" Peron. We were also allowed to see La Presidenta's office, although we were not allowed to linger! Christina (la presidenta) is flown by helicopter from her residence to the palace every day and from there is whisked up to her office by her own private lift.
In the afternoon I headed down to the San Telmo area to check out the Sunday antiques and craft markets. The streets in the city centre had been pretty quiet all day, but San Telmo was buzzing with people, impromptu tango and music of all genres. I was restrained in my purchasing (unlike most of the locals I saw who were all shopping hard!) as I figured that I am coming back here before I come home - plenty of time to buy those Boca Juniors shirts, rugby tops, polo gear and mate cups!
As I am in Argentina, the country that eats more steak than anywhere else in the world, I figured that despite not having eaten meat for years, that I might try it. On the recommendation of the hostel staff I went to a parilla/steak house on Calle Defensia fairly close to the hostel. There I met 3 guys from St Albans who I joined to eat a big lump of meat. Thankfully it was extremely tender and didn't need much chewing! Not sure yet whether this is a new phase of eating, or whether a one off! To celebrate we then went to the casino to play some blackjack and roulette. Overall we were up, but I wasn't particularly lucky!
Another busy day today. I started with a visit to a travel agent who pretty much booked up my entire month here for me! I'm off down to El Calafate tomorrow.
La Recoleta cemetery is where Argentina's rich and famous are buried. It's an amazing site with thousands of mausoleums, often extremely ornate. Some were obviously forgotten and neglected, which made them rather eerie with their broken glass and cobwebs exposing old coffins. The most visited crypt was clearly Evita's, with hoards of tourists and flowers decorating the door. Recoleta itself is a really nice neighbourhood and perfect for a window shop/browse before lunch and one of the most incredible ice creams I have ever eaten. Dulce de leche ice cream - wow.
La Boca in contrast to Recoleta is a much more blue collar neighbourhood on the edge of the smelly river and the home of Boca Juniors (Maradona's football club). Caminita is a road of workers houses that were all clad in corrugated iron and then painted bright colours with leftover paint from the ships that the workers were employed on. It's now very much a tourist hang out with lots of bars and souvenir shops and tango dancers strutting their stuff, but still a really interesting spot.