I had bought the cheapest flight I could find, which went from Heathrow to Houston (10hrs) and then Houston to Buenos Aires (10hrs) with a nice long stop-over in Houston airport in between. Of course, I didn't think about the 30+ hour journey when I booked the ticket seating confortably at home, or the fact my seat on the plane would be squashed in between two other people and shoved up against the toilets. Movement was further restricted by the chair in front, which was pretty much horizontal, requiring me to adapt a slouched-down position in order to watch tv. The only consolation was the being near the air hostess hang-out. Fitting pretty much every stereotype, the badly-dyed platinum blonde, lipglossed and startlingly blue eyeshadowed middle-aged, gum-smacking air hostesses bitched about customers and drawled about rodeo. The inflight promo for Texas showed people eating burgers and the airport was suitably fitting; the chairs double the widith of normal ones and moving walkways everywhere. It almost felt like I was on the space ship in WALL-E. Anyway, enough about the journey, let's get on to Buenos Aires.
So...what’s it like here? Well, it’s huge. I realised that as soon as I got off the bus from the airport and had to find the connecting subte (underground). The city is made up of grids (apparently a Roman design brought over by the Spanish when they colonialised), so getting around is pretty simple. It’s made up of quite distinctive neighbourhoods, of which I am staying in San Telmo, a not-so-long-ago working class/artisty area that is now a mix of antique shops and kitsch boutiques housed in old mansions. The hostel I am staying in is really nice, well-located and sociable; at 6 pounds a night I can’t complain.
San Telmo
Plaza Dorrego, San Telmo
Upon arriving I met another newly-arrived German roommate, Stephanie, with whom I set out to explore the city. We walked to the centre of San Telmo, a leafy plaza packed with cafe terraces, and along the district’s main street to Puerto Madero, a newly renovated, now upmarket docks area. We cut across to Plaza de Mayo, whose historic status as a place of congregation (back in the 1940/50s this is where Eva Peron whipped crowds into frenzied Peronista supporters) is palpable. The plaza is covered with graffiti-ed political messages, white scarves of the mothers of the disappeared are painted on the floor and protestors demand recognition for soldiers who fought in the Falklands. Next we popped in the cathedral, where the most prominent statue is that of the saint of football! We continued to Florida, the main pedestrian shopping street, which bustles with shoppers, workers, tourists and street performers, including live music and a disabled man who paints with his toes. We continued our walk to Recoleta, another barrio, which is a chic residental area and home to the cemetery Eva Peron is buried in. The cemetery has a very unique atmosphere, with little house-like masoleums packed together into a kind of mini-city. Walking around you can see dusty coffins, occasionally cover by a white sheet and accompanied by a photo of the person, through glass and/or broken doors. Many of the masoleums have fallen into disrepair (apparently maintenance costs are very high) and are now covered with plants and cobwebs; it feels like nature is slowly reclaiming them.
Puerto Madero
Casa Rosada, Plaza de Mayo
Plaza de Mayo
Plaza de Mayo
Saint of Football!
Florida (main shopping street)
Plaza San Martin
Recoleta Cemetery
Recoleta Cemetery
Facultad de Medicina
The next day I woke up to rain. “Rain?!” I thought, remembering my bag full of shorts and t-shirts. Apparently Buenos Aires is not that tropical...well not yet anyway. Our American tango-dancing roommate suggested a museum we could visit in the neighbourhood, so Stephanie and I decided to give it a go. It wasn’t a conventional museum with things stuck on the walls, but rather a tour of an old mansion uncovered after years of neglect in the 1980s. Once a house of the rich, it was abandoned during a yellow fever outbreak in the 1800s and was later divided into impossibly cramped immigrant “flats”. Underneath the house (and the two next door) was a tunnel built to cover a creek and now you can walk where the river once ran.The tour guide was great, explaining the history of the house and area with little ancedotes. Fortunately on coming out, the rain had stopped and we could walk around. We passed by the Museo de la Ciudad (city museum), which was free that day, so we went in and saw a cool little photo exhibition of people in cafes. Afterwards, we walked along the main East-West street, Avenida de Mayo, past important looking buildings to Congreso (parliament). We then got the subte to Palermo, another chic neighbourhood, but quirkier/cooler than Recoleta. Here, there are more kitsch designer shops, their fronts painted in different colours, and lots of bars and cafes. Later, we visited the Evita museum, which tells the story of her life, showing video clips of her famous speeches and some of her fabulous clothes. You really get the impression that it was her that made Peronism.
El Zanjon
El Zanjon
Casa Minima (the white house with bricks is the smallest in the city)
Peru
Street Art on Avenida de Mayo
Avenida 9 de Julio
Palacio Barolo
Congreso
Obelisco 
Plaza Lavalle
Palermo
Palermo
Palermo On Thursday, I went to la Boca, the old port area, with Stephanie. Brightly painted houses, originally the work of Italian immigrants, have now been converted into a big tourist area, now housing cafes and souvenir shops. It has a very similiar atmosphere to Montmartre in Paris. We arrived early to try and escape the tour bus crowds, which we did to a certain extent, but by noon the place was heaving. We sat and watched gaucho (traditional Argentinean cowboy) and tango dancing at a cafe, before heading back to downtown, where I located my school and bought some potentially useful things for studying.
Stalls setting up at La Boca
La Boca
La Boca
La Boca
La Boca
La Boca
La Boca
La Boca
La Boca
Gaucho dancing in La Boca
Tango dancing in La Boca
Friday morning Stephanie left, and I went back to La Boca with two of my other roomates, the American tango-er Terese, and Danish Amelie. After a spot of shopping we headed to a handmade tango shoes shop, where Terese had shoes to collect. The workshop was at the back of the shop so you could watch them making your shoes. Quite an art! Later we went to Palermo for lunch and yet more browsing of quirky boutiques.
La Boca
La Boca
La Boca
Shop in La Boca
Shop front in Palermo
Fruit and Veg Shop in Palermo
Street Art in San Telmo
Ghostly boy running around a corner in San Telmo
San Telmo Street Art
Saturday, Amelie and I got up early and went to Recoleta for the morning. After a tour of the cemetery, we walked to a huge metallique sculpture of a flower, whose petals open up each morning and close up each night like a real flower. Nearby, we walked through a crafts market selling all kinds of clothes, jewellery and knic-knacs. We got a bus to Puerto Madero, and walked the length of the docks in the sunshine (past turtles!) back to San Telmo, where we had some pretty good Italian ice cream.
Recoleta Cemetery
Recoleta Cemetery
Dogwalker in Recoleta
Floris Generalis
Recoleta
Plaza San Martin
On Sunday I went to the Feria de San Telmo (craft fair) with an American guy, Mark, from the hostel. Every Sunday the roads are closed and a street market extends all the way up to the central plaza. The streets were really animated with the stalls, street performers and people taking strolls. Later, I met a French girl, Celine, who is volunteering for the year in a children’s home an hour out of Buenos Aires. I went with her to meet some of her (French) friends and went to late lunch in a restaurant where a scene from the Motorcycle Diaries was filmed.
Monday, I met one of the guys who works on the reception, Juan Pablo, to practice my Spanish, before enrolement the next day (he is learning French, so we are exchanging languages). We wanted to go to the Reserva Ecologica (Nature Reserve) by the river, but it was closed so we sat on a bench studying in a leafy area nearby. Afterwards, we walked towards downtown, through a surreally peaceful rose garden backed by a cityscape of hugely tall skyscrapers.
Rose Garden
Rose Garden
Tuesday, I got up early to enrol for my Spanish course. Upon arriving at 9:04am (it opened at 9:00am) enough people had already arrived that my entry exam wasn’t until 11am. After some quick revision at an internet cafe, I took the entry exam and chose my class times (9-11am Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri) and walked back to San Telmo. Later on I went to the Botanical Gardens in Palermo with a Dutch roomate, Mavis, which was full of stray cats lounging around and plants coming into flower. A couple of hours later, we went for coffee and cake in a really nice cafe in Palermo.
Botanical Gardens
Botanical Gardens
Botanical Gardens
Well, this has been an epic blog! Sorry about that! Will add more pics and hopefully write little and often in the future.
Lots of love x x x
