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Steak, steak, steak!!!!!!!!!!
That is about all I have to say about B.A.
Well actually there is a bit more to it then that, I guess. We arrived on a Sunday 25th May after a monstrous bus ride from Mendoza . The bus broke a few hours into the trip and we spent about 4 hours in the middle of the night in some other s***ty town waiting for a replacement bus.
The 25th of May in Argentina is a national holiday something like Independence Day, so it was a bit nuts. They had closed of the main street that runs through the city, a measly 18 lanes wide (I think it´s the widest street in the world) and were having a concert with all the top Argentine musicians playing beneath the Obelisk. We wandered around for awhile people watching mainly, always good cheap entertainment, bus sleeping on a bus makes you really tired so we were off to bed by about 10pm. That was top be the earliest night we would have for the next week and a half.
Buenos Aires is a lovely old city with lots of gothic and neo-classical architecture and we spent quite a bit of time wandering the streets near our hostel just looking at the facades of all the buildings. There are lots of plazas at the ends of major streets as well and we visited a lot of the statues and monuments of famous Argentines, none of whom we had ever heard of or whose name I can remember.
As with any large city there were a plethora of museums and art galleries to spend hours getting lost in (or looking for, as was our case on one particularly long and hung-over day). Damien enjoyed these immensely, I think he should have studied history. He was very excited about some Ming Dynasty vases, ancient pottery from South American Indian tribes, marble sculptures, artifacts from the invading Spanish Conquestadors as well as a few paintings by artists such as Picasso and Monet among others .
In one of the old suburbs of called Recoleta there is a cemetery where for over a hundreds of years the rich and famous of BA have been burying their dead in huge family crypts. It has become somewhat of a major tourist attraction with many a dead president, army generals, actors, poets. The most notorious, and most visited crypt, tucked away in a far corner of the cemetery, is that of the family Duarte , the final resting place of Eva Peron. It is her father´s family crypt.
One of our day trips was to the suburb of La Boca (translates to mouth in English, as it is situated on the mouth a river) is the home of the famous Boca Juniors and La Boca Stadium of Maradona fame. We had intentions of securing very-hard-to-come-by tickets to a game that evening against their bitter rivals Riverplate. So we made the trek down there with some mates from the hostel and spend the best part of an hour bargaining with a lady over the price of a few tickets. When we had reached a compromise, although still about 6 times what a local would pay, and she sent her man off to get them for us and he came back with only 2!!!!!! Argh. Damien and I left the boys then to haggle some more and find their own way in, instead we went off to explore the colourful streets of Boca. Incidently the boys managed not to get tickets, instead paid some dodgy man a large sum of money to sneak them into the stadium past the guards where they had to hide in the grounds for a few hours till the game started. They had a great time.
San Telmo was another suburb we spent time wondering. It has lovely cobblestone streets and a huge antique market on the weekend where you can get everything from odd numbers of silver cutlery to ancient guns, from old soda bottles to pockets watches to coins to copper pots to crazy clothes, costume jewellery and everything in between. Again Damien was in his element finding all sorts of interesting (and useless) stuff that he wasn´t allowed to buy. San Telmo is also the home of Des Nivel the best steak house EVER!!!!!! We ate there 4 nights out of the 11 we spent in BA . For around AUD$10 you got the biggest most tender and juicy steak you are likely to find anywhere in the world. They were so good you only had to run your knife lightly across to slice off a tender juicy mouthful. They were so good that we ordered the same thing each time we went there, Bife de Lomo from the parrilla (grill) and that was it. Have you ever eaten a steak so good that you are served it with absolutely nothing else on the plate what-so-ever? We have. I would almost move to BA just for that restaurant, almost.
This leads me to Buenos Aires after dark, which is where we spent most of our time. In fact you could say for the majority of our stay in BA we were nocturnal, with a few forays out in the daylights hours to partake in some of the obligatory tourist activities.
Sorry mum, but it had to be done.
We met a great group of guys and gals in our hostel from NZ, the UK and Ireland who we spent most of our dancing/drinking time. We developed a routine as follows, up around 5-6pm in the arvo for some ´breakfast´, maybe another nap for an hour or two before a party would begin at our hostel (which it did every night) about 10pm.
We would hang out at the hostel drinking, playing pool, chatting or dancing until about 2-3am when we would head out to one of the many clubs in town.
It´s not our fault mum there is no one in any of the clubs before then! They don´t even open until midnight.
We would time our arrival back to the hostel to coincide with breakfast which started at 8am, then off to bed for the day. If we had something we were keen to do the next day we would get an early night and be in bed by 3am.
So next we are off to Uruguay which will be a nice change of scenery and pace (I think we´ve had enough nocutrunal activity for awhile).
Hope everyone is happy and well at home.
Love Bec and Damien
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