And we continue with our January adventures…. As they rolled to a close! It’s time to catch up as now there have been more adventures.
So, Holland America has as an excursion option on disembarkation day the choice of having a private car and tour guide for eight hours – ending at the airport. For a solo person the car for two would be great. It’s likely a car the size of a Toyota Corolla I suspect. As we have six pieces of luggage with us (two checked each plus carry on) we realized we needed something bigger so we booked a “private minivan” which is supposedly large enough for three or four couples. I tell you, the van that picked us up this morning was big enough for about 12 people with 22 days of baggage but there was only ourselves in it.
Ours was listed as “Buenos Aires Private Touring – Full Day (Minivan) Ending at the Airport.” I suspect you’d want “Buenos Aires Private Touring – Full Day (Car) Ending at the Airport.” I’ll describe now how it worked for us. We think it was worth it and I’ll explain way, but also use this as an excuse to describe the experience.
The cruise port in Buenos Aires is pretty chaotic. So, from beginning to end.
As is the case for all disembarking passengers luggage goes out the night before by midnight. They haul your “checked bags” down, you bring down your carry-on. You have to carry your carry-on down in the morning to the cruise terminal shuttle and then carry it to the terminal. For these private touring transfers you are in the last group to disembark – at 8:30 for us. They give you enough tags for your bag and they call you when it’s time.
Upon arrival from the terminal you get off of the bus and go into the terminal and find your other luggage, which if like us would be Blue group C, a fairly small section towards the near end of the baggage claim area. Then you take your baggage (there are no carts) out through customs. At customs you must put everything through an X-ray machine (they will put it up for you but really didn’t help taking it down). In general there were not luggage trolleys available.
For us, this was a matter of maneuvering, between The Boss, myself, and my mother, one 76 pound rolling bag, one 65 pound rolling bag, one 40 pound rolling bag, a couple of fairly heavy duffel bags, a rolling carry on, a few shoulder bags and one backpack out through a fairly good sized building.
Then you spill out onto a wide covered apron near the street where a HAL person will direct you through a crowd to a corner of the building where there were numerous people carying signs with your name on them.
Pro tip – pack less than we did. Take advantage of the unlimited laundry offer.
So, we found our guide and he directed us across a dip in the concrete to a van that was luckily waiting on the best patch of curb available. The driver loaded our luggage and we were on our way.
Logistically, the way it works is on embarkation day the HAL excursion desk leaves you an envelope with a form for you to fill out regarding anything you may want to see on your private tour. In reality, our guide had a list of eight main areas he shows to everyone but if we had anything special we wanted to see it should go on the list. I was looking at something that wasn’t steak for lunch so I researched, and we wanted to see the Evita Peron Museum, so I researched that as well. Otherwise, he covered the five main areas we wanted to see including the cemetery and Plaza Mayo along with Recoleta and Palermo neighborhoods, We also added Ateneo Grand Splendid Bookstore which was also among our favorites.
So as I was saying, they picked us up and we were on our way. We spent the morning heading towards the central and then the more southern part of the close-in city and then after lunch we headed towards the northern part of the city. Finally, we went to the airport.
We stopped by Teatro Colon which unfortunately was closed except for the main hallway due to some electrical work being done. We could have done a tour here for forty five minutes in English but it would not have happened anyway.
One note – our guide, and most of the guides, are fully licensed and many of them have college degrees for being tour guides. With his badge our guide was able to visit most attractions without paying a fee, although we had to pay the international rate. he also seemed to know somebody on every single block. Martin was approached many times for the typical Argentinian kiss on the cheek greeting. Oh, but one other thing – even though he has free admission everywhere at attractions where they sell an electronic guide or otherwise he is often forbidden from providing his own commentary. More on this later.
We spent a bit of time in the square behind the theater talking about the buildings in the neighborhood including the palace of justice. Then, back into the van.
I snapped this photo of The Obelisk on our way to our next stop, Plaza Mayo. Santiago and Punta Arenas both had Plaza de Armas; Buenos Aires has the same thing, Plaza Mayo. Most Spanish colonial cities have something similar.
This heavily-touched-up photo I took of the pink house – their presidential mansion. It sits on Plaza Mayo along with the national bank and the cathedral and a number of other buildings.
This is the inside of the cathedral on the square. As it was Pope Francis’ seat when he was in Buenos Aires there is now a small Pope Francis museum attached apparently but we did not visit it. There is actually a bit to see here including The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the Independence. If anybody is curious I’ll look it up when I get around to reviewing my notes.
Back in the van. Let me tell you, it’s nice to only wait for two others climbing into a van. Martin wanted to take us to the San Telmo neighborhood but as we visited it yesterday we suggested moving on. Instead, he took us straight to the La Boca neighborhoodwhere we drove past the very famous soccer (futbol) stadium. Every building in La Boca seems to be painted in its colors. Here we got out of the van and went for a coffee in what I would call a “coffee speakeasy.”
This was my cafe cortado. Mmmm. Anyway, the entrance to the coffee shop was through a souvenir shop behind a painted door and up some stairs in the back. You would not know it was there.
La Boca is a neighborhood that was settled first by Spanish immigrants and later by Italian immigrants in the late 1800s. Along the port there there is a walking street, Caminito, leading to the small port where today many artists sell their wares.
Caminito is actually a combination between an outdoor market, walking street, and outdoor gallery.
Our guide Martin highlighting one of the artworks.
The back of a meat-selling restaurant.
After this part of the tour it was time to say goodbye to the South and head north. Along the way we passed the new port district along the eastern side of the district, much better than the cruise port neighborhood. It reminded me of the newer parts of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor district or some of the developments along the Chicago River in Chicago.
Martin insisted we stop at this – it was not on our radar at all. Two years ago, long time Cruise Critic readers will remember, around the time of one of the January Antarctic sailings there was a tornado that hit this part of Buenos Aires collapsing part of the roof in the cruise terminal. In addition to collapsing the cruise terminal it did some damage to this, Floralis Genérica. This has only been reopened for the past two weeks. Prior to 2023, it opened in the daytime and closed at night; now it is just… open, but hopefully it will soon return to its opening and closing status.
After the flower we visited Recoleta Cemetary where Evita and her family are entombed. Of course, our guide told us the story about this as well. She was not actually entombed there until years after her death of course and there are many many mausoleums that are more grand than hers. If anybody is interested, please let me know and I will share more photos.
And then finally we visited Ateneo Grand Splendid bookstore.
This bookstore is great, obviously. It’s like a large Barnes and Noble if you speak Spanish. If not, then it’s just pretty. The English language section is on the ground floor on the left. There is a gift and merchandise section in the lobby. On the third (top) tier for a fee you can see an exhibit regarding the history of the museum and they will serve you snacks. Or you can pay for a coffee and sit on the stage.
I bought a dual-language cookbook here, it was on sale in the lobby. We also somewhere along here stopped for lunch.
I’m not going to say lunch was a mistake, but it certainly was an adventure. I think our guide’s intention was to take us to one of the market restaurants or somewhere similar, but prior to the day of the tour when we provided our list I gave him the name of Niño Gordo – “Fat Baby” in English. This had the potential to be a legendary lunch except for two factors – one, we had eaten ourselves to death on the few days prior and two, halfway through the meal the power went out!
Our guide was actually a young guy – in his mid-twenties, and perhaps when I assessed him as an adventurous recent college graduate in a cosmopolitan city I was wrong :-). We took him to an Asian – Argentine fusion spot. As you can see above, we were seated in a section that had low seats, near the floor, with light spilling in from the tabled area and from the bar area. We ordered several dishes to share including kimchi, an Argentine-Asian beef dish, and a fish dish. It was going great, but around the second course the power in the kitchen goes out and half the restaurant goes dark. Not long after that, the air conditioning above us starts dripping on us – because it was off and no longer blowing the condensation elsewhere. So, surprise.
We finished our lunch and then made our way to the airport. The airport is a bit crazy though. The key here that worked out well for us is with the private car or van our guide snagged us a luggage trolley, walked into the airport with us and showed us where our check-in counters are, and showed us where the security desk is.
One thing I’m going to note now –
EVEN WITH PRIORITY STATUS EZE IS A FOUR HOUR AIRPORT IN THE LATE AFTERNOON AND EVENING. UGH.
Delta’s check-in opens at five. American opens at six as does United (I think). Delta has fewer people staffing check-in but the same number of planes as American. American opened early. We arrived at 5pm and my mother got in line for check in right away whereas the two of us sat and had coffee for ninety minutes as we had several hours to wait. With priority our check-in was 20 minutes; my mother’s was 90 minutes. The security line was I think 50 minutes, passport control was 20 or 30 minutes. Okay, so maybe with priority it’s a three hour airport. However, as we arrived so early we had time to kill. We enjoyed a light meal at Le Pain Quiotidien along with some wine and beer prior to running the security and passport gauntlet. And then? The best thing ever. We visited the Admiral’s Club lounge where, after spending a hot summer day touring Buenos Aires, I was able to take a shower! We finally boarded for our 11:59pm flight and were happily able to sleep on the plane as well.
And all of the bags on the right (the four) made it on the plane to Miami. When we landed in Miami it was barely above freezing and there were gusty winds which slammed our plane to the ground twice. I figured we’d be in for the same at home but it was a more typical landing. Even so, brrrrr.
On approach the Potomac was full of ice. And then we spent the next week clearing snowcrete from our driveway and walks…. Back to normal.
By contrast? Today?
Off for another adventure…
