5 Favourites – Buenos Aires

It’s a difficult thing to do but we have created a shortlist of our 5 favourite things about Buenos Aires…

1. Architecture – Buenos Aires is full of buildings and sculptures that look like they belong in an classical European city. The casa rosada (home of Evita’s famous balcony), government buildings and even run down buildings in the heart of San Telmo make you question whether you are actually in South America. We took a tour of Casa Rosada and it was incredible to see the number of beautiful chandeliers and artwork all made by French and Italian artists. My favourite buildings were those that that had beautiful classical architecture but had also been painted lime green.

2. Street art – There is art everywhere in Buenos Aires – on the buildings, the roads, the subte (underground system), on people’s front doors, in the hotel rooms. There are even street mosaics remembering those who ‘disappeared’ in the 70’s for political reasons.

3. Learning Spanish – There is something special about learning a language in a foreign country… you can learn something in the morning and then spend the afternoon testing it out on patient taxi drivers and hotel receptionists. We did 1 week of the Intermediate 1 course at Ibero spanish school. The lessons were entirely in Spanish but our amazing professora (Fernanda) managed to teach us hundreds of things in just 1 week (through exaggerated hand actions where necessary). Here is our class with our certificates – presumably for participation as opposed to success?

4. Food and Wine – Our love of food meant that we had to do a separate post on this here. I particularly loved the sweet pastries and dulce de leche for breakfast and the dulce de leche ice-cream on a hot afternoon… (sense a theme here?)
The thing that I loved about wine in Buenos Aires is that not only is it all locally produced but, each time you a glass of the house wine, you are served a glass of wine (full to the rim) that tastes like you have ordered the most expensive bottle in the cellar. All this for 30 pesos (£3.50). Hopefully we will get to do more extensive wine tasting when we get to one of the wine regions in either Mendoza or Salta.

5. Tango Music – I guess I always knew Chris and I would enjoy tango but I didn’t realise how much I would enjoy tango music. Before we left the UK, our fabulous Hitchin friends gave us a gift of private tango lessons in Buenos Aires. We had the most amazing hour learning the tango – although, if you think about it, we only really learnt how to walk without stepping on each other’s toes. Our wonderful (and highly recommended) teachers were Gerry and Lucia and they not only helped us prepare for our first Milonga (Tango dance hall), they aso introduced us to their fabulous collection of 1930’s and 1940’s tango music. Here’s one to listen to…

and one thing that deserves a special mention….

Dog walkers – The first time we saw someone pulling 8/9 dogs we almost kept following them around the street. You can see them almost every morning and each time it made me laugh.

Recoleta Cemetry

When you think of popular tourist attractions you don’t ordinarily think of a cemetery, but then Recoleta Cemetery is anything but ordinary.

Shamefully, Chris and I knew absolutely nothing about the  cemetery before we arrived. We could not tell you one piece of history of the place or of the famous people buried there. All I knew was that Eva Peron’s grave is there and that is a good enough reason to visit. So, it is fair to say that we were sufficiently overwhelmed by the scale of the burial sites at this place. Each one, neatly packed against the next, contained grander and grander monuments to the families whose corpses it housed. 

Sadly, there was no tourist information or guide so we learnt absolutely nothing.  However, we did manage to find  Florence, a friendly map seller who did tell Chris that she does not care about the whole Falkland/Malvina issue and still loves him. She also made us promise to eat a KitKat chunky for her (purchased either from Sainsburies or Tesco) when we get back to the UK. I think we can manage that!

Here are some pictures of some that caught our eye….and, of course, Evita’s grave (last 2 pictures)

We weren’t the only famous people visiting that day. The President of Estonia was also there (although we note that he only visited Evita’s grave). We didn’t get a picture of him because we were much more intrigued by his heavily armed entourage.