Day 350, 19 June 2013, Buenos Aires - Morning walking tour and evening "Aristocratic" tour with BA Free Walking Tours (www.bafreetour.com).

For a great summary of many of the public buildings and monuments we saw on the tour google "Wiki Landmarks in Buenos Aires".

Pictured is the Cabildo, the original centre of colonial government. It is pure white because it is repainted weekly - that is how bad the freedom of expression problem is in this teenage democracy (oh... sorry - that's code for graffiti!) In the bad old days of the military dictatorship, you would be thrown in jail for graffiti... now the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Apparently it has such a bad museum inside it it is not worth the money to visit. It's free on Fridays... then it's not worth the time to visit. We figure with those kind of reviews from a local, who are we to argue. I don't know how many kilometres we covered today - Oh - yes I do! LOTS!!! The weather in BA is stunning - hardly any humidity, brilliant sunshine, blue skies and a crisp 12 degrees - gorgeous for walking about this amazing city. Our morning guide Victoria cracked us up - she taught us how to talk with our hands (officially recognised symbols throughout BA) and told us while the Portenos are incredibly friendly people - they're just not polite (had that figured already). We took the metro to the meeting place marvelling at the 50 cent fares (even cheaper than Spain itself). Saw all the main sights - the Congress house where only the President can go in the front gate - Senators and Representatives nip in and out the sides. And we saw the Confiteria El Molino / the windmill building right next door, currently a home for squatters, where ousted politicians would meet in secret during the time of the military government in Argentina. We learned so much about the country's incredibly sad history during the tour... aside from the Falklands war, I don't think either of us knew much at all about the very recent bloody history of the country. The fact that democracy as we know it is only 30 years old in Argentina explains why you can see from 3 to 100 protests in the streets on any given day. Not huge, not violent... In fact we saw one as we were sitting near El Obelisco near the end of the tour! They are so common that the fences in front of the Pink House / Casa Rosada stay up all the time... would be silly to be whipping protective fences up and down every five minutes otherwise. We strolled past the Cafe Tortoni - one of the oldest coffee houses in South America (in the world... in the universe....). That too is one of the quirks of the Argentinian psyche. They are, in the words of our local guide - snobs. They must have the best. In fact, Avenida 9 de Julio (Avenue of the 9th of July) is the widest avenue in the world. They are brought up knowing this from birth. At 150 metres approx. it is indeed very, very wide. Based on the Champs Elyssee, no less. But it is not the widest - the one in Brasilia, Brazil is. Just don't get into it with an Argentinian. Our evening tour was different again - our guide Sol advised us that BA is a city of people from Italy, speaking Spanish, living in French houses and pretending to be English. And that is, hilariously, true. BA was built to be the Paris of South America and it truly is - the wealthy immigrants (many from Italy and France) who arrived here in the early 1900s would export food (beef, beef, more beef...) back to Europe and need ballast for the empty ships - so they would bring all the materials for a new family palace... all the way from France. So it is more correct to say the stunning houses do not just look French - they are French. The evening involved a stroll through super classy Retiro and Recoleta, ending at the famous cemetery (will visit during another day). We heard wild stories of Evita Peron - honestly, what happened to that woman after her death is so outlandish it has to be true. We even popped into a rock concert at the end of the tour - the next two days are public holidays - so BA is gearing up for a 4 day weekend of music festivals, fairs and markets. Did you know... they get 18 public holidays a year, including 3 x 4 day weekends. Nice. We are even wearing small pins of the national flag given to us in the street. We've eaten empanadas, drunk red wine, listened to music, laughed a lot and walked forever - what an introduction to one crazy city!