Our holiday is not far away. In preparation, my mum bought me the Moai Statues on Easter Island in Nano Blocks. Thankfully the degree of difficultly was lower than the Tokyo Tower, as it was completed over a couple of evenings. Based on the reading I’ve done about the Island, the real statues won’t be too hard to find. Not long now!
Today will be a day of sitting, short walks, planes, and new destinations.
One flight down…. and two to go. These are the segments I enjoy. Once we are on the plane… we are only 3-4 movies, half a book, magazines (thank-you SA public libraries), and a couple of meals before land again.
Helen is sound asleep and I am drinking Quilmes. At around $3 from my mini bar, that’s certainly a bargain.
Today was our first full day in Buenos Aires. To get ourself oriented we thought we would ride a bike. Fortunately for us Santi, Ben and Taylor from Biking Buenos Aires were only too happy to show us the ropes…. for the required fee of course!
We toured through San Telmo, La Bocca, Puerto Madero, Recoleta, Retiro and Centro. All up good fun. Lunch was had a permanent “truck” where plenty of porteno office workers had lunch (hopefully Helen will upload her lunch photo shortly). I know I’d be a regular if I worked here.
Some photos for you
To see some more go to Flickr
Our Wednesday was longer due to flying across the international date line. The flight was okay… uneventful – just the way I like it.
Watched a few movies: Chef, Still life, The normal heart, and VEEP (b grade american humour, but enjoyable given the location). There was a bit of turbulence a few hours in during the meal service.
Flying over so , much sea it is a delight to see land. But when you finally see the continent… The mountains are really something to behold. Coming into land in Santiago was amazing from the perspective of seeing the mountains appear… and then, go on, and on, and on. It was truly a beautiful sight – no picture can do it justice.
We spent three hours in the airport in Santiago. While the chairs were uncomfortable, there was a haze surrounding the airport, which was unfortunate as your could just see the outline of mountains hugging the area. The flight from Santiago to Buenos Aires was incredible – just for the views of flying over the Andes. We were on a Boeing 787 (Dreamliner- new), which was quite spacious for a plane, with a lot storage overhead. Once you take off the plan begins it climb up and turns to head over the Andes. Quite soon everyone is required to be in their seat for potential turbulence. The plane climbs to 41,000 feet, and the views are amazing. Unfortunately no photos were taken due to the proximity of both of us and the photo devices, the view of the snow capped mountains seem to go on and on, and are a marvel to behold. You are just going to have to wait until the bus ride – something to look forward too, sort-of.
We are staying in the Palermo suburb of Buenos Aires. I understand that this is the largest of the barrios. It is itself broken down into a number of sub-barrios. Each with their own name and character. Trust me… we did a lot of walking yesterday and they certainly do feel quite different from one another.
Our hotel is located in Palermo Hollywood, so named because the existence of tv and radio producers are here. This area and adjoining Palermo Viejo are loaded with restaurants, bars and boutiques.
Now, Adelaideans will appreciate the problems of Plane tree lined streets on an early windy spring day. A lot of the streets here are like Frome Street in terms of having mature Plane trees, well we are hear in early spring. All I can say the joy of Plane tree pollen is no less over here.
We are seeing a few bikes around. It seems to me if Buenos Aires can manage bike lines, many of them separated from the road, with its traffic, then perhaps we could do a little more back home than carp and complain.
If you happen to be in Buenos Aires and want to see some good Latin American art, that’s not on the street, I’d certainly recommend a visit to MALBA – Museo de Arte Latinamericano de Buenos Aires.
We saw a retrospective of the Argentine master Julio Le Parc. A fantastic exploration of his work that paints with light. Completely darkened rooms, with specific lights illuminating moving objects to create part visual art part movement art with light.
Equally impressive was its permanent collection. For which you can see a few photos below. As Helen will tell you, you can also get some excellent value piece of contemporary jewellery.
Some of you have an expectation that everything we eat is always amazing. Well Helen wasn’t feeling so well yesterday (she is much better now) so we weren’t focussing so much on looking for amazing food experiences…. So this food experience is for the team!
It is important to try and get a sense of the place. We were looking to see what middle class portenos do on a Saturday afternoon. Is it any great surprise that they go to the mall. We found this out at the Abasto mall quite an amazing mall built in a former wholesale fruit and vegetable market.
It has one of the biggest food halls I’ve seen, but get this… you can get a rib eye steak here for about $10 and the food hall serves wine. You can imagine that I was heading there… and I did. I was in the line waiting. At that point I realised there were going to be at least three interactions in Spanish 1) selecting and paying 2) selecting salads and 3) pickup. Not at all confident with my Spanish, I freaked out and left the queue. But the problem was where to find food that was easy to order.
You would have guessed McDonalds? Well close, I have an abiding dislike of McDonalds, so instead I chose the local alternative Mostaza. On a cultural side note, I did notice a teenage worker at Mostaza commencing her shift. She greeted each staff member as she arrived with a peck on the cheek the universal way of saying hola to your friends here.
Well you’ve scrolled past the picture to find out if it was any good. I can tell you that it was put together with as a much love as McDonalds and is about as good as it looks!
As a consolation, I did arrange for room service steak sandwich with a glass of Malbec. Total cost around $10. Try that an Australian hotel.
And… yes success at last…. this was very yum!
Today it is raining…
Our original plans of going to the soccer match today were cancelled due to the match being a “super Classico” between two home town rivals, and members angry about not being able to get seats. I don’t blame them – I would feel the same! On the plus side it is pouring with rain… and forecast to rain all day, so it’s probably a good thing for us not to be standing in the rain watching soccer with 70,000+ people. So we have our day back… Still lots to do and see.. and Kym is planning.
Yes… It’s time to move already. It didn’t just rain yesterday… It poured, pretty much all day, so in the end we were thankful we weren’t standing out in the weather for the match. Instead we visited a market… Found excellent coffee (was there any doubt we wouldn’t?), did a tour of the Teatre Colon, saw some tango, and watched the soccer match on TV.
All in all… It was a good day.
Adiós Buenos Aires!