Okay. Buenos Aires. We were in Buenos Aires on January 30 and 31. So, buckle up.
Before we left for South America Buenos Aires seemed as if it would take some logistics to handle. Instead, we learned it was similar to visiting New York City, London, Paris, Washington, Atlanta, or Montreal. Yes, there is traffic, but it is not crazy traffic. We thought it would not be easy to find places where it would be safe to walk around. We were wrong – much of the city, much of the center city, seems safe, safer than Santiago – and before we arrived in Santiago it seemed more approachable. So, arriving in Buenos Aires. Let me describe it to you.
When we planned our South America and Antarctica journey we had realized that one of us would be marathon training and mostly on a treadmill. As we planned to be out the evening we were in Buenos Aires (Friday the 30th), and as we had to fly home on Saturday night arriving on Sunday to be back at work on Monday, we decided Saturday would be a relatively easy day. It was. We slept in a bit, one of us spent the morning on the treadmill while the other got organized to fly home and walked some laps on deck, and we enjoyed some of the solitude of a ship in port for a while. Let me describe to you what this was like.
The view from the ship in Buenos Aires is lovely – not. It’s a view of a port and parking lots. At least unlike some other ports you don’t drive through huge stacks of containers to get to the cruise port. Instead, you come off the ship, you board a bus and drive past containers, and then you drive across parking lots for trucks and containers to get to the cruise port. It’s not a scenic cruise terminal. Two years ago the cruise terminal itself was struck by a storm during cruise season and nearly demolished – it has now been rebuilt which is pretty amazing.
Is it a nice terminal? I guess so? But it’s chaos outside. There is not much space for pickup; we attempted to get an Uber across the street but the terminal area has 3G signal rather than 4G or LTE so it’s hard to catch an Uber, and beyond about three blocks from the terminal it really is not a good part of town to walk as there is a tightly packed South American neighborhood-that-was-built-without-authority where as a tourist you do not want to pass. But beyond there, get about a mile or a mile and a half from the terminal, you are in a beautiful cosmopolitan city. Ignore the news about Buenos Aires’ currency catastrophe. Ignore the threats you hear; it’s like being in a Spanish-speaking Brooklyn in my opinion.
Similar to Montevideo we aimed to have a market lunch in Buenos Aires. This was another grill open to the bar in the middle of a market – this time it was Mercado de San Telmo and forgive me I do not have the name of the restaurant within the market. We actually brought my mother along for this. Afterwards we explored the neighborhood. Two blocks away there is an outdoor art market which we explored.
As was the case with a lot of other places we visited we saw street dancing in the park.
And then we enjoyed a wine tasting in a wine shop! This was another thing I specifically sought out and one of the reasons we visited San Telmo as there were another of wine merchants. We actually brought a couple of bottles home from here (no surprise really), one of which can be purchased locally here. Interestingly the shopkeeper used Google Translate to speak out his descriptions of the wines and play them back. Honestly I could have done without that.
We saw interesting sights on the streets in San Telmo. And then we moved on back to the ship for a short siesta before heading out for the evening.
As is the case with a lot of tourists we ended up at a tango show. Our destination, courtesy of a Holland America excursion, was the theater stage at Cafe de Los Angelitos.
At the theater we were offered a cafe or dessert. Still working off lunch we focused on the pavlova which seems to be the national dessert of Buenos Aires (yes, I know Buenos Aires is not a country, but with many places it seems like there’s Buenos Aires and then there is the rest of the country). This was followed by an hour tango show with a mix of modern and traditional tango dancing.
The dancing was spectacular.
As was the singing.
This was well worth it. I think I’d see tango once a week if I were spending a summer in Buenos Aires.
And then we were done. Back on the bus for a ride to a closed door restaurant.
Apparently Buenos Aires has a number of closed door restaurants – relatively small restaurants focused on serving privately. Basically they are the speakeasy of restaurants. Ours seated I think about 30 people, so two thirds of a tour bus. I didn’t take any pictures at the restaurant. I think I would have enjoyed it more if we had not had a large lunch. As it was, the wine was great, the appetizer was good, but the steak dinner was the same as the others we had in South America – and I don’t remember what my partner had (she does not eat beef). It made for a long day. I think if I were to plan it again I would have planned my own tango stop followed by a more avant garde dinner somewhere, maybe even modern sushi.
We were back on the ship around 11:00 in the evening, so very early by local standards, ready to sleep for eight hours before waking up to be off the ship at 9am. And more on that tomorrow.