Buenos Aires: First Full Day

I have forgotten to mention that since Argentina is in the Southern hemisphere, it was late Spring there, so the temperatures, even when cloudy, were 75 degrees during the day. The humidity was also high, making for an uncomfortable walking environment. We could have worn shorts, but almost no body wears shorts there. I saw only a few tourist wearing short and they stood out, something we did not want to do. Although it was obvious to every local that we talked to that we were American, and luckily they still like Americans.

We met in the hotel lobby around 7 AM I think and went out for a light breakfast and coffee. After that we walked down to the docks to buy our tickets to Uruguay for the next day. We knew the walk was short, but once at the docks we somehow missed the building with the big sign that read "Buquebos", the name of the company the hotel suggested. So we walked too far into the docks and finally a man stopped us at the entrance to an empty building and directed us back to the correct building.

Once there, we found the room where you buy tickets. It was set up very nice. They took our name and then when a representative was ready our name was posted on a monitor, which we did not notice right away. The saleswoman was very helpful and got us signed up for the deluxe tour, which included the price of the fast boat, a guided bus tour of Colonia, lunch at a nice restaurant and then a walking tour of the city. I think this cost about $100 dollars per person, which is relatively cheap.

Now that we had our tickets we went back to the hotel to drop them off and then made the plans for the day. Now for some reason, exactly what we did this day and in what order are a little fuzzy. I suspect my memory was not so good due to jet-lag and the extra long two days it took to travel there and all the walking the day before.

I believe our first plan was to use the so called hop-on-hop-off bus to take us to a few sites around the city. The bus had a stop across from the hotel. We boarded the bus and after sitting for some five minutes someone finally came to sell us tickets. Turns out they wanted over $100 US dollars! That is way to much. These tour buses usually cost more like $15, and we were only going to go to a few of its stops. Plus they seemed very disorganized - and slow. So we ran off the bus and opted to walk to our first destination - the Recoleta district to see the Recoleta Cemetery.

Many famous people are buried there, including past Argentinean presidents and Eva Peron. This cemetery is huge, with rows and rows of mausoleum (or crypts?). Each one decorated in some unique, ornate way. After walking round in the sun and snapping some photos, I was ready to leave. We found the site were Eva Peron was buried, but not her husband. We could have paid for a map from one of the many people outside selling maps to this free site, but they were too annoying so we just ignored them.

By this time we were ready for lunch. From the day before when we were here looking for the Hard Rock Cafe, we knew there were many places to eat. We ended up in the Buenos Aires Design center, an upscale mall with all sorts of interesting stores with expensive looking furniture. I was fascinated by a booth that was selling door locks that open with your finger print. We sat down at a small cafe and I opted for what looked like a callzone. It wasn't too bad, but was over-cooked and needed more fillings inside. I was really hungry.

We then left and hailed a cab to take us back to the San Telmo district. There was a house with underground rooms that we wanted to check out. The conseair at the hotel had marked on a map where the house was located, but we walked up and down the street and could not find it. However, we walked into a museum to ask about it and they didn't know what we were talking about, but encouraged us to check out their "door" museum, which was free. It was a very small place, with items recovered from buildings that used to line the street back when the area was kind of a Little Italy, I believe. After a few photos and signing a guest book, where the people who signed it before were from San Diego also, we left.

After some more walking around we found ourselves at May Square again, near the government buildings. This time something was abrewing. There were more police and they were in riot gear. I took a photo of them without being obvious because they were stopping others from taking photos. Not wanting to get involved in any kind of riot, we walked back to good-old Florida Street. As we headed up we heard some noise. It was the protesters marching up a street banging on drums and holding signs. We think it was a protest by indigenous laborers, but we never found out. They were protesting peacefully and even had their protest permit displayed on the front banner.

So more walking got us back to our hotel. I was also hoping that my lost luggage was found, and once in my room I saw I had a voice mail message. I eventually got ahold of someone who told me my bag was delivered by the airline. I was very happy to hear this. Clean clothes awaited me.

We took about a hour break before going back out for dinner. There were restaurants everywhere. We heard someone talking about a place near the hotel, but we got there too early and all they had were pizzas, not their full menu. So we checked out a few menus of nearby places and found a nice restaurant called Dada's. Turned out this this was our best dinner and dinning experience of the trip. The waitress was very nice, spoke great English and the food was unbelievably great tasting. I can't remember exactly what I had, but it was beef of some sort topped with all sorts of flavorful sauces and sides. We finished off the meal with a decadent desert. We left feeling satisfied and again, ready to turn in early, since we planned to meet at 7 AM in the lobby so we could get to the boat dock by 8 AM.

This may have been the night that Brad, Lorie and I went back out for another walk up Florida Street as Karen went to her room. We discovered that later at night, when the leather shops are closed and nobody is trying to get us into their stores that the street was much nicer. It was also well lit with bright lights. We discovered a three story mall with a beautiful, tall Christmas tree, above which was a Sistine Chapel-like painted ceiling.

Since the planned wake up time for me was 6 AM (or 1 AM San Diego time), it was time to go back to our rooms. It was kind of depressing to watch all the people leaving the hotel, dressed up for long night of dinning and possibly Tango dancing as we headed up to our rooms for sleep. We did no Tango dancing while in Argentina, which was fine by me.