Look at that, a picture of Evita's tomb to accompany a blog about Buenos Aires. No marks for originality!

We arrived in BsAs (as the locals insist on abbreviating it, I'll stick to BA from now on) early afternoon on the 17th and headed to the trendy Palermo Viejo district that was to be our home for the week. Pete Steward very kindly offered his 19th floor triplex penthouse apartment complete with rooftop hot tub. That'll do very nicely indeed, we can't thank you enough Pete.

We made ourselves at home and checked out the neighbourhood. It is home to refurbished colonial houses, swanky new apartment buildings and lots of cool boutiques, bars and restaurants. However we were more excited by the opportunity to cook for ourselves and spend the evening in front of the TV and so we hit the local Disco supermarket. So at least we can say we did go to the local disco!

The next morning the Evita museum was top of the list. We tried to take a shortcut through the neighbouring botanical gardens however after following the perimeter all the way around we discovered there was only one gate. Not quite the shortcut we envisaged, but the gardens were pretty and the mosquitos had a treat feasting on Fabrice!

The museum is housed in a beautiful old house that was a women's refuge owned by the Eva Peron Foundation. Not surprisingly it tells the story of her life, complete with many photos, videos, clothing and other artefacts. Equally unsurprisingly there is no mention of the musical or film, I'm not sure the Argentines ever got over Madonna being cast in the lead role! The museum would also probably struggle to afford Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's hefty royalties.

Having learned more about her life, next on the list was the Recoleta Cemetery to visit the Duarte family tomb. Evita's remains eventually made it there in the 1980s after much controversy and various interim resting places. The cemetery is unlike any other I've been to. I've seen Catholic family tombs before, but here you can see into many of them and see the actual coffins sitting on shelves. Some of them were in a pretty poor state of repair but no bones were on display thankfully. There are some beautiful examples of ornate gothic stonework, and some pretty horrendous ones too.

Clearly the Duarte family tomb is the main attraction - can you name another famous (dead) Argentine? Covered in plaques from various organisations commemorating the life of Eva Peron (I bet the rest of the family are a bit miffed!), you cannot actually see into this one.

That evening we met up with Kieran and Crystal for a big steak dinner in Palermo Viejo. We're really going to need to go vegetarian for a while when we get home.