Day 11, A Tour of Buenos Aires Neighborhoods

Our first full day in Buenos Aires, and we have a half-day city tour. Full bus, without
very good windows, and so the photo opps were limited.  Why is everything of interest always "look out the right side", but I'm sitting on the left??

That makes me laugh about hotel design and who designs bathroom lighting that is useless for women?  These tour guides must also attend the same school.

I offer photos of interesting buildings, we travel through several neighborhoods starting from our own Centro neighborhood which is just on the border with Recoleta.

A rather interesting sculpture flies by on the right side of the bus. A metal flower whose petals open and close during the day.

Buenos Aires is located along the Rio de la Plata, but the muddy polluted side (as opposed to the pretty clean side of Uruguay). So there are no beaches here. Instead, lots and lots of parks to cool off in the heat of the summer. Truly, as tourists we are liking these too...it is HOT and muggy.

Our drive takes us into Palermo neighborhood, mansions and embassies. Then Palermo Soho for artists.  They are lovely areas.

Crossing the Ave 9 de Julio boulevard again, we learn it is 18 lanes, 144 meters wide. Some additional interesting sites...McDonalds, the Subte signs for the sub-terranian metro, the national theater Teatro Colon, which is a pride and joy for excellent acoustics.

Teatro Colon

Pink Government House, famous balconies

Plaza de Mayo is an important square for a nice walk around it.  On one end is the Pink Government house where the president works...balconies famous for Evita's farewell speech.

Also on Plaza de Mayo is the Metropolitan Catedral.

In there park are several demonstrations, quiet today. The Women for the Missing People demonstrate on Thursdays at 3:30 pm. These are the mothers of revolutionaries who were picked up by the government decades ago, and never seen again.

demonstration of crosses

Beautiful buildings around Plaza de Mayo, the lightposts remind me of Paris in a romantic way.

Next on our tour is the San Telmo neighborhood, where the tango was born.

Off to the right side...there are the ornate domes to the only Russian Orthodox Church in Buenos Aires.  Mostly Catholics here, of course.

La Boca is our next couple of stops to walk around, and what a treat this is!

La Boca means "the mouth", and it is a small inlet on the river that defines the border between Buenos Aires city and province.

Starting with the neighborhood of their football (soccer) team stadium. Of note are the Coca Cola logos along the roofline...black and white instead of red and white...because the arch rivals of the local team have those colors. And it's obvious that blue/gold are the local team colors, perhaps a dozen souvenir shops are open for fans.

Buildings in La Boca are often quite brightly painted. And the murals are amazing!

Obviously a poorer neighborhood, looking between the bright colors are dark alleys and dank corners of living, trash, thin dogs.

Behind a bright mural, stark backsides of buildings. And then some art on the side of a home that depicts a much bright home of the imagination.

As we are waiting to reboard our bus, I wander into an amazing courtyard of brightly painted scenese. Oops...bruskly told in Spanish that I don't belong there, a little further along it is a "museum" of some sort for 10 pesos admission...but no one being admitted right now.

Caminito Street is our next stop in the La Boca neighborhood. Another place where I think I've died and gone to Color Heaven.

Look at all the multi colored walls. The story of the walls is the availability of paint.

Too poor to paint in one color, the residents get paint leftover from ships. There is only enough paint to do a wall at a time, and colors are limited to those of boats.

Our tour guide has some explanation about the Caminito Street conception. The homes used to open up to the railroad tracks for commerce, but that died with the train. The other sides of the buildings were just windows...so you don't see doors on the street! But with all the shops opening up to the street, that is not obvious.

I'm the least colorful character on
Caminito Street in Buenos Aires

In the Caminito Street area, here also these wonderful statue characters. We saw on a balcony is the Evita at center. I'm not sure what the story of the figures is, but they add so much character!

Caminito Street is a major tourist draw. Outdoor restaurants, lots of souvenir shops, artists on display, street performers.

We also see the tango being danced in the restaurants, tango dancers looking to pose with you for photos to make a few pesos.

Wait...is that Jim doing a tango move with a statue?

If not in the street, this would be the place to come and dance in a tango club. But alas, Jim has already performed.

peaking inside a Tango Club

One of the extra special things of the neighborhood is to see residents cooling off on
their balconies. However, many of them do not seem to have glass windows, just cloth
coverings.

After La Boca, we ride alongside the harbor area Puerto Madero. That includes a section below the upper road ramps, where there is a shanty town or favelo.  By my rough estimation, this may also be close to the start of that long delapidated pier where people were fishing on our way in on the ferry yesterday.

Moving back into the San Telmo neighborhood...look off to the right, there is a large
antique and handicraft market held every Sunday.

I do not get a photo, and  We do not get off the bus...and possibly that was a good idea. We meet a couple ladies tonight from Australia who were there. Upon leaving, they turned down a not-busy street and were assaulted by a foul-smelling spray. A couple "passers-by" offer to clean off the "bird poop", but really just lift the wallet from one's handbag, and dash off into a waiting taxi. This is the "famous Bird Poop Scam", which BA residents on TripAdvisor believe "everyone should know about this and be warned", yet you are never warned, this cannot be acceptable.

And our tour is over, ready to rest for a short while, cool off. Lunch at a corner
restaurant, ice cream from the corner store, we enjoy a sit in the local park where it is a lot cooler when you just don't move. The homeless there also were cooling off.

Tonight is a Big Event...we are going to the Carlos Gardel Tango show and dinner! Jim is particularly a fan of Carlos Gardel, as being responsible for expanding the popularity of the tango and making it accessible to everyone. Tango was originally performed by whores and men of low social standing, but after Carlos and others in the 1930's brought it out as a distinctive music and dance form, everything changed.

Our show is of course not photographic without flash, and that's not allowed. It is held in a palacial room with elegant furnishings. After a dinner that was okay, the tango
performers and singers were amazingly talented (was I ever that young and limber?),
wardrobe outstanding, choreography interesting, every moment was a thrill and worth the price of admission!