Our first full day is sunny, and slightly breezy. The sunrise is around 7am and the morning air is cool enough to need an extra layer over the t-shirt, but pleasantly balmy for early spring.
As we are staying near the Cementario de la Recoleta, famed for it’s ornate splendour we felt we had to give it a go, but first, more technology, working out how to use Western Union money transfers. After success at this, we found a nice cafe, grabbed a coffee and empanada and were set up for a couple of hours wandering around some tombs.
The first thing to mention is that this graveyard covers about 5 1/2 hectares – 4 city blocks. It is huge and thankfully you are given a map to help you pin point the tombs of those well known families in Argentina’s history, Evita Peron perhaps being the most notable of our limited knowledge of famous Argentines.
The second thing to mention is that there are a LOT of tombs and they are indeed ‘ornate’, with each different to the other. It felt like in some instances that there was a bit of ‘one-up-manship’ going on. Some seemingly ancient (although the cemetery was only started in 1822), some new, gothic, art deco, austerely simple, lavishly decorated. You name it – that style was there somewhere. Quite a lot of the tombs were in a somewhat dilapidated state, broken windows and doors, some seemingly bricked up, but there was also a lot of work going on, tombs being renovated, and tidied up and cleaned. South American culture (and many others) celebrate the ‘death day’ of individuals, recognising and celebrating their achievements, and several tombs are covered in ‘tribute plaques’ – homages of thanks from grateful recipients for the good deeds done.
We made sure to visit the tomb for Eva Peron (Evita) but also to try and find most of the other ‘notables’. (These were mainly army generals who had been key players through Argentina and Buenos Aires’ past wars.) In the main though, we just wandered the passages and marveled at the architecture of the many tombs and the tributes on them.
Despite being a tourist attraction, everyone behaved respectfully as it is still a working cemetery and indeed, a funeral was taking place as we were passing through, so we didn’t take a lot of pictures – it didn’t feel right somehow, but it was definitely worth the visit.
It was such a beautiful day it felt wrong to be in a museum or indoors, so after the cemetery we decided to explore the streets in the surrounding areas. Despite Buenos Aires feeling very built up and busy, it also has a lot of green space and many of the main thoroughfares, despite being chockablock with traffic were wide and spacious feeling and we enjoyed wandering around, passing through small neighbourhood shopping areas, wide open spaces and coming upon fabulously huge buildings (the Public University):
and sculptures:
Florais Generica
and a few imposing monuments.
The day finished with a tasty chicken and salad dinner at a local craft brewery of which there seem to many. A lovely first full day in South America, the first of many.
Our second day was another dry and sunny day, although a little more hazy and slightly cooler than the first.
We decided to head for the central district (Buenos is categorised into about 8 ‘areas’ such as Palermo, Recoleta, Central) where we were looking forward to seeing ‘Casa Rosada’ – Government House – nicknamed Casa Rosada because it is very pink, painted that colour in the late 19th century, when a lot of buildings were painted that colour:
It is situated at one end of Plaza de Mayo with the Cathedral Metropolitana de Buenos Aires situated at the other end. We would have missed the Cathedral had we not been looking for it specifically; observation so far seems that churches in central Buenos Aires are not always obvious, and not in the same abundance as in some European cities in which they tend to be ornately visible on almost every street.
The Plaza de Mayo was a short stroll to the old docks, where on crossing the bridge we encountered a couple busking by dancing the Tango. Definitely not usual in the UK. The old habour frontage, like many, has been well-redeveloped with apartment blocks and cafes and restaurants sitting alongside old, now ornamental, cranes and loading gantries.
The day involved a lot of walking again as we explored a couple of other areas, Montserrat and San Telmo (famous for the origin of the Tango) – interestingly mixed architecture and area demographics – Montserrat seemingly wealthy compared to San Telmo, which seemed quite run down. We felt quite pleased with ourselves though as on our wanderings we managed to buy and load SUBE cards to allow us to travel on the buses and subways with the Argentinian ‘tap and go’ card. We assumed it would be easy, but you have to buy from specific locations and then if you need to load it with cash payment this has to be done in a tube station. This took a bit of working through but we got there eventually!
We also wanted to get a univeral basin plug – seems a bit odd, but a lot of the places we have stayed in on past journeys have had missing kitchen and bathroom plugs and it’s really irritating when washing up or shaving so we would buy one, then we would always have one handy. It was definitely less challenging than getting a SUBE, little hardware stores being widely available and Google translate being extremely helpful!
On our travels, we decided to have a look at a building recommended by the Buenos Aires guide book – the palacio aguas corrientes which was built in the late 19th century to store fresh water supplies for a growing city. We were totally floored by this huge building, which looks incredibly like it should be housing royalty, not water! Wiki decribes it as the most ‘exuberantly decorated building in Buenos Aires’ and we cannot disagree – it is fabulously covered decorative tiles and carvings. Apparently it now also houses a museum with a large collection of sanitary artifacts – a treat for another day perhaps!
We enjoyed an evening meal at a local restaurant and experienced our first Argentinian steak – a ‘half strip’ which is sirloin. It was substantial and very tasty, served with chips or sweet potato fries which were more like wedges than fries and in large quantities. It was a very friendly and popular restaurant, definitely worth the visit, and we are enjoying spending some time in Buenos and practising (mangling) our spanish.
Our third full day began with low cloud which then morphed into rain, lots of rain. Yet another couple of hours battling with Sim cards (for Dave this time) led to a hunt for a better option and the discovery of another provider where the shop does it all for you. We headed out for a walk to find said shop and once the very easy process of buying and letting the shop staff load the sim was complete, we spent some time in the shopping centre sheltering from the downpour outside.
As the rain didn’t seem to want to let up, we had our first experience of the tube system and headed for a recommended book store – El Ateneo Grand Splendid – and splendid it truly was!
A disused theatre now converted into the most fabulous bookshop – absolutely delightful, with a cafe on the stage where we shared a very lovely piece of chocolate cake.
Finally the rain let up enough for us to walk over to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes for a bit of art gallery culture. We were impressed by the number of artists – Monet, Manet, Degas, Gaugin, Rodin – it seemed like every famous name was there along with some lesser known (to us) argentinian artists. It was a very enjoyable way to pass a couple of hours.
Although we have had a couple of iron grey, wet and very cold, wintry feeling days, we have still enjoyed exploring, so plenty of walking but limited photo opportunities. A trip experiencing a slow overground train through Buenos to Tigre, a suburb in the Delta area on the outskirts gave us a flavour of more normal housing with a small but busy high street. We took the option of the ‘Tren de la Costa’ back to the centre and this was apparently scenic, which no doubt it is, when the weather allows. It stops quite a few miles short of the centre so we walked back through a few more of the Buenos Aires ‘zones’ such as Belgrano and Palermo, stopping for a ‘light lunch’ on the way.
An evening entertainment booking was definitely worthwhile, The Tango Porteno – a 20’s style Tango show with a meal, set in an art deco theatre. A real mix of dancing, an excellent band playing amazing tango music, and some sung storytelling – sadly in Spanish so somewhat inpenetrable – but added hugely to the enjoyment nonetheless.
Our last full day in Buenos was a chance to visit a couple of unusual museums: The Palacio Sarmiento, once a school for upto 700 girls and now housing the Ministry of Education and the Public Library;
and The Palacio Agua des Corrientes – the aforementioned water storage building which not only still housed the old water tanks and pipeworks, but a small museum detailing the planning and building of the building and bathroom and water related artefacts, eg, taps, and the like. Absolutely fascinating.
