Day 2!

So me and my travel buddy explored Buenos Aires on foot today.

We first went to have breakfast, it was very exxy, had it at an Italian restaurant. Our meal was: orange juice, coffee, water, 3 croissants each, some kind of jam and a very sweet caramel spread. For a grand total of 36 Argentinene pesos!!! We vowed to eat at cheaper places for the rest of the day.

We then set off to explore. We saw a bus station and attempted to catch a bus. But bus driver wouldn't let us on because we didn't have any coins. (The bus only have a coin machine for payment, the locals pay using a card that you tap on a machine. As we later found out). Bummer. So we set off on the quest of trying to get Monedas (coins). First we went to Mcdonalds and Shell petrol station. No luck. They told us to go to Citibank across the road. We went there and waited in line. And waited and waited. Then we decided if we walked to where we wanted to go initially we would be there already so we left the bank. And we started making our way from San Telmo to San Martin Square.

And Monedas are like gold in Buenos Aires. Rare and quite hard to come by.

I bought a couple of things on the way to San Martin square and we ended up getting some coins as change! Lucky us!!!

We made a few stops for photos. And event of the day possibly was, I was trying to cross the road, Rob tried to take a photo of me crossing the road (as tourists do), I stepped in gum, I did not stop for the sake of the photo and kept going, gum flicked up into my show (yuck I know!), I get to the other side and start swearing, Rob crosses the road and apparently almost get hit by a bus, and I spend the next 10 minutes scraping gum off my thongs with sticks and water.

Anywho, our first major sight was the Ministerio de Defensa. It had cannons and big buildings etc. And a flock of pigeons that flew around in circles!

Then we went to San Martin plaza. There was a memorial and guards guarding it. They looked like bucking ham palace guards but were very nice as they let me stand between them for a photo. San Martin is a great place to have lunch as there was lots of big tall trees around. However what we found was odd was that the trees would constantly 'rain' on us. And it wasn't bird poop because I saw no birds above me! That had me quite confused.

We went around looking for a good cheap meal for lunch as we saw alot of people carrying paper bags and picnicking in the park. The pedestrian street in the city was right next to the park (which reminded me of queen st mall and roma st parklands in brisbane which made me feel very much at home - and the fact that I saw jacaranda trees blooming).

Finding lunch was a bit of a mission, but we eventually came across a bakery and I bought a sandwich with ham cheese tomato and lettuce for 18 pesos and Rob got a sandwich with chicken schnitzel in it which was apparently quite oily. We took our lunches back to San Martin to eat.

We relaxed at San Martin for a while, and then we decided to go to the famous cemetery in Relecota. It was quite a walk, about 1.5km but double for us because we kind of got lost. Well I was in charge of reading the map from my phone and there were 2 streets named Alvere within 500 meters of one another so I got one mixed up with the other and we took a very long detour to the cemetery.

But it was awesome to take the detour, because we saw some teenagers around 17-18 protesting something with drums and whistles in the middle of the road. They were dancing around, laying on the road. Being curious tourists we sat nearby to watch and started filming. Since they were road blocking at quite a busy intersection, a fight almost escalated between one of the boys and a taxi driver. But the police came just in time (with very big canines) and got these hooligans off the road. There wee maybe 20-30 of them. They had La Salle 2013 and Roman numerals XVII on their shirts. I think they were protesting for rights to education or something. Which makes sense since it was a Friday and they really should be in school.

We walked through the posh suburb of Relecota, the apartments were quite nice and saw a couple Jews, which wasn't surprising since Jews are sometimes known for their wealth.

The cemetery was very very large. It was for the dead rich and famous of Buenos Aires. There were houses which were roman style (in my opinion) and they were very fancy - they had columns, statues of angels, busts of he deceased, glass windows. And inside the houses were the coffins or ash. Sometimes it was at ground level, sometimes there were stairs that led to an underground crypt where they keep the dead. It was a little spooky at first, because near the entrance, some houses were damaged and it looked a little rundown. But as we walked further in, the houses became more and more fancy and grand. It was very peaceful eventually. There were a few stray cats in there. We saw this massive one, which belonged to a scientist who won a Nobel prize for chemistry ( first to win one from Argentina I think. There was a dome at the top and columns which support the dome. The underside of the done had a glass mosaic of Jesus Christ and other figures. If you look inside the glass doors, the inside ceiling was made of gold. The crypt underneath this single architecture could apparently house 50+ coffins. Yet it only had 1. If the descendants of the scientist were to sell the coffin house today, it could fetch US$2 million. But there's no way they would sell due to the history and significance of the coffin house.

We walked around and tried to find Evita's grave, but we had no luck (and we were too exhausted). Evita was the wife of a prime minister and was apparently very influential.

We went to the nearby park, which I think is called Plaza Intedente Alvear, and sat there to have a nap and relax. When we left, I needed to go to the toilet and as a result we came upon the Jazz Festival and witnessed a free jazz performance. It was really entertaining to listen and view a live performance of an ensemble of piano, sax, flute, drums, guitar and double bass.

After the performance we left and came upon a food vendor in Plaza Interdente Alvear. We bought an overpriced sandwich which was sausage, some onions and egg and capsicum, in a bread roll for 21 pesos. It was a rip off as I initially thought it would be 7 pesos because they said 28 pesos to the group of 4 japanese tourists before us. But I think I misheard and my spanish was poor and it was actually 28 pesos each for the japanese tourists. The sandwich was soso, the sausage not very healthy and bread was quite dry so you need quite a big of sauce to make it better. We have learnt the lesson to ask for price first before we buy food from now on.

We are the roll in the plaza and laid down and relaxed. Then it got cold and we left at about 7;30pm and the sky was still semi bright. We found our way to a bus stop on Libratador and caught 130 back to chile San Telmo. Found our way back to the hostel and I face booked some photos, the collapsed and fell asleep right away after the long exhausting but fun day.

money spent (in pesos):

accommodation 60 pesos

bus approx 3 pesos

food and water? 20, 36, 25, 28 pesos

Day 2: 60+3+20+36+25+28=172

172