Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
I love Buenos Aires! I spent 4 nights in good old BA, and after 4 days in Uruguay I´m heading back there to soak up some more of the red wine...i mean, culture. On my first night there I met up with my 3 English San Pedro prison companions, AKA the guys I travelled through Bolivia with. We stayed at a hostel in the San Telmo district of BA, such a cool place, I could definitely live there....now there´s an idea :) My first full day in BA was on Sunday, which was a stroke of luck as it seems that Sunday is the day where everything happens in San Telmo! The area is full of cool little boutiques and antiques shops. On Sundays there´s a huge antiques market and live tango in the streets. We watched an amazing old couple dancing, and then went and looked around some of the shops and their faces were on all the postcards so I guess they must have been famous! We strolled around the markets until the heat got the better of us, its so hot here! (sorry you people in cold England!). Once we were all antiqued out we walked to the La Boca district of the city, stopping for a compulsory giant banana and dulce de leche ice cream in the park on the way. We saw the outside of La Boca football ground, unfortunately didn´t get to go in, and then walked on to El Caminito, one of the main attractions in BA. The colourful street was packed with people and all the bars and restaurants had live tango. Slightly less cultural, but possible the most hilarious part of the day was when we saw a dog wearing a Boca football strip and another one wearing jeans, truely ridiculous :)
My second day in BA was equally great. I got the tube over to the cemetery, another big tourist attraction! Its not like any graveyard I´ve ever seen, rows and rows of huge elaborate graves. Lots of famous Argentines are buried there, including Eva Peron, whose grave I visited, along with about 500 American tourists. I walked around all the nearby plazas, all really pretty, and such a hot hot day. In the evening we caught a tube over to another district to go to "La bomba de tiempo". The tube experience was absolutely horrendous, worse than the London underground at rush hour. I literally couldn´t move, was covered in other people´s sweat, and had to elbow about 5 people in the face just to get off the train! We´d been recommended "la bomba de tiempo" by someone that lives in BA, apparently it´s the best place to go on a Monday night (surely the only place to go on a Monday night??). Anyway it was such a good night. There were about 20 people on the open-air stage all playing drums and percussion instruments. They took it in turns to conduct the band, totally ad lib. There was such a good atmosphere and the place was packed. The music went on until about 10pm then we went out for dinner, at another place we´d been recommended. A really good recommendation - huge, cheap steaks...mmmm. It was so good we went back there the next night! After dinner we sampled the BA nightlife! So now it´s Uruguay for a few days, then back to BA!
- comments