The multi-coloured houses of Caminito in La Boca, Buenos Aires
The first day in Buenos Aires was spent trying to get our bearings. We walked around down town figuring out the best bus stops and tube lines to get all over the city. On the way we passed by the Pink Palace and ended up at the obelisk in the town centre, to mark the anniversary of the city. It’s a strange place – it all feels very familiar, yet bustling 6 lane highways alternate with silent and tiny unkempt back streets.
We headed back on the Subway (Subte). This was easy enough – just go down into the station and look for the ticket office. Hand over AR$1.1 and you’ll get a ticket for one journey. This lasts until you exit the barriers so can be very good value.
In the evening we made it to the upper class Palermo Hollywood district and a restaurant called Green Bamboo ( Costa Rica 5802, Palermo Hollywood – http://www.green-bamboo.com.ar/) for an exceptional Vietnamese meal of filled squid tentacles, spring rolls, chicken wrapped around sugar cane and the highlight, a simple duck confit.
Porteños (as the people born in Buenos Aires like to be called) eat dinner very late, usually not before 9 or 10, so restaurants don’t bother opening until 8.30pm. This is a mixed blessing for visitors who don’t want to eat that late – it’s easy to get a reservation in any restaurant for 8.30, but you may well be dining alone for at least an hour.
The next day we spent in downtown again, shopping for clothes and booking tickets for the rest of the week. Just off the main shopping street (Florida) we watched a film being made. It looked like either a commercial or a music video as lots of people were running round with broken looking cassette players and old fashioned Walkmans. Lunch was a couple of excellent hot dogs, which are less than a pound each here and seem of reasonable quality.
We also visited the cemetery in Recoleta, final resting place for Eva Peron, about whom I only really know what Andrew Lloyd-Webber has taught me. Her grave is always surrounded by throngs of tour groups by the others are far more interesting. Some of the grand mausoleums are falling into disrepair and you can see inside to the rotting coffins and occasionally the wrapped bodies within.
That evening we ventured to Palermo Viejo, and the heavily recommended grill and La Cabrera ( J.A. Cabrera 5099 (corner of Thames), Palermo Viejo, http://www.parrillalacabrera.com.ar). Dinner started with a huge lump of sausage, followed by rib-eye steak with a selection of small side dishes. These included cheese sauce, creamy lentils, tiny potatoes in mustard sauce and some roasted peppers.
The basic side dishes served to every table consisted to mustard mash, pumpkin mash, roasted garlic with shallots and carrots, roasted aubergines, a tomato, bean and lentil concoction and finally apple sauce which goes surprisingly well with beef. All this was less than a hundred pesos, without wine, or about $30.
The next day we did boring stuff like laundry, but having it done for us in a laundrette was only AR$12, or £2 for same day service. They would have collected and delivered as well for the same price, but it was just too complicated a phone call to make rather than just walk round the corner. We needed to visit the food shops anyway, so dropped into the local corner shop which was stacked with an excellent array of foods and a remarkable deli counter.
That evening I cooked a homemade hamburger dinner which we enjoyed with one of the bottles of wine we’d bought in Mendoza. We have to drink though it as the next journey is by plane rather than coach and I simply don’t have the luggage allowance. This one was the celebration wine Don Arturo created for his daughter’s wedding, and whilst I only paid $30 for it sells for $250 in New York, and it was outstanding.
If you need to get around Buenos Aires by bus, this website is exceptionally useful. Enter the start and end street and it’ll plot the best bus route between the two points: http://www.comoviajo.com/website3/Monitor/Consultar.aspx
To use the bus, just wave it down, get on and tell the driver where you’re going so he bothers to stop and take a couple of steps into the bus. On your right will be a machine that takes coins in the top. Feed in AR$1.25 (at time of writing) and a ticket will slowly emerge. This is good for as far as you like on this bus.
Back in Palermo we discovered the largest supermarket in Argentina was only 6 blocks from our house. I would say it was the largest supermarket I’ve ever seen with an amazing array of food and drink, and a wine section larger than my local Tesco at home. We stocked up on all sorts of good things and went back to the apartment for a feast.
Sunday for tourists in Buenos Aires is the day to go to San Telmo market. Apparently it’s famous for its Seltzer bottles, although I didn’t see that many, but what it does have is artwork, and lots of it. Mostly of tango dancers, the artwork is actually pretty good but I was more interested in watching the real tango dancers performing on the streets.
We also bought maté cups. As previously mentioned, mate is the national drink of Argentina, and whilst you can buy tourist cups everywhere I wanted the real thing. These require curing over the course of a couple of days before they’re ready to use, but it was worth the effort and now we can drink mate non-stop…
On the way back we got off the subway early and walked past the botanical and zoological gardens to the Japanese Gardens. These were a gift from the Japanese embassy to Buenos Aires and are a very pretty arrangement of walkways and ponds, teeming with huge Koi carp.
Our apartment was only a few blocks from the polo fields and horse racing tracks. It seemed we were never going to meet the dress code for the polo grounds, so instead headed to the Easter Monday Horse Racing. Entrance is free to the standing area, or for a few pesos, you can go into the grandstands and watch the races on TV instead. We stayed outside in the chilly evening air and bet on horses purely based on whether we liked their name. As it turned out the races were quite short and straight, so every time the favourite won. This was strange as the odds were always at least 2 or 3 to 1 so it seemed like easy money was to be had, but why hadn’t anyone else noticed this? Armed with my new insight into horse racing I went and put on a larger bet on the favourite number 7 at 7-2. It wasn’t until the race started it became apparent there were two number 8’s in the race, which bothered me, but fortunately 7 came in and I decided it was time to stop betting whilst I was ahead.
The main effort on Tuesday was trying to send stuff by mail. It turns out the post office needs a passport to wrap a package, so we went back to the apartment to pick one up and returned at 6pm to find it only opens from 11-5pm. Tired and bored, dinner was just a mix of gourmet empanadas which I thought didn’t seem as tasty as the cheaper ones bought in the street
On Wednesday we waited to go out until 11 and made a second attempt at sending the package. Arriving at the Post Office by taxi we could see a lot of people milling about outside. They were grumbling as it was closed for no reason, so the taxi turned round and took us and the parcel back to the flat.
In the afternoon I wanted to do something good so we finally went to La Boca, the rough area of town, and more importantly to the Caminito.
Caminito is one of the main tourist attraction of Buenos Aires – a brightly coloured few streets situated in the larger region of La Boca. It started as a port but is now home to artists and the tourist industry. Painters line the side of the road, selling their artwork, whilst tango dancers perform outside cafes and a Maradona lookalike offers photos. La Boca is home to Boca Juniors, Maradonas old club.
Thursday – 3rd try at package. Success!
