Day 57: Buenos Aires

For our first day in Buenos Aires, we wanted to take it a bit easy. We had a late morning start and decided to join a waking tour in the afternoon to get to know the city. We found a nice restaurant to have a late lunch in, then just walked around after trying to find the meeting point, and to get a bit acquainted with the area.

Couldn't pass up the chance to try some Argentine beef for my first meal

Topped off with some delicious dulce de leche crepes for dessert

At 3pm we headed to the National Congress, our meeting point for the free walking tour. We joined the Buenos Aires Free Walks, and we really enjoyed it.

The National Congress

We had a very good, funny, and knowledgeable tour guide who was a porteño, a local from Buenos Aires (comes from the Spanish word puerto meaning port). He started off with a short history of Buenos Aires; how it's different from the rest of Argentina. To begin with, they had a lot of Spanish and Italian immigrants, and they left a lot of influences in Buenos Aires.

A lot of the buildings were built in French style. Buenos Aires is sometimes nicknames "the Paris of South America." The city really feels European with the buildings and tree lined wide roads and streets. Buenos Aires is also a very flat city, and walking around is really easy (Ange and I didn't take public transportation at all our first two days, we walked everywhere).

Our guide described this building below, the Palacio Barolo, as a building based on a book. The architect based the structure and content based on Dante's Divine Comedy. The floors are divided into different sections representing hell, purgatory and heaven, and its height of 100 meters corresponds to the 100 cantos of the Divine Comedy. It's now an office space so our guide joked that when someone complains that their work is hell, always remember that there are people actually working in hell.

Palacio Barolo

Despite Catholicism not being as big in Argentina as before, when Pope Francis was elected, he suddenly became popular all over, especially in Buenos Aires where he is from. His picture would be in a lot of places, especially those he frequented. The football club Club Atlético San Lorenzo de Almagro even gained international recognition because it's the club Pope Francis supports. They even had his face printed on their shirts, and wore it during one of the games. Interestingly, they also happened to win the Argentine league on the year Pope Francis was elected.

While we were taking a short break, our tour guide was shocked that some of us hadn't tried alfajores yet (alfajor is a typical South American confection made with two cookies and filling in the middle). So he bought some at a convenience store for us to try.

This one had dulce de leche filling

We continued on and reached the Evita Mural; at this point he gave us a brief history of Peron and Evita. The interesting part of this mural, is that is has two sides. On the side shown below, Evita is shown with a microphone, supposedly rallying against the north where the wealthy people lived. On the other side of the building, Evita is shown smiling to the south, where the working class people and poorer lived.

Evita mural

From there, we walked down Avenida de Mayo, and stopped by El Gran Café Tortoni, Argentina's oldest and most famous coffee house. It was frequented by a lot of famous Latin American intellectuals, artists and politicians. Our guide recommended we come back and try their churros con chocolate.

There was a line outside for those who wanted to lunch/snack inside, but our guide was able to get us in to look at the interior and take a few pictures. Really good and old fashioned vibes.

We passed by several pretty churches on the tour, but I wasn't able to catch all their names.

At last, we reached the famous Casa Rosada (Pink House). The Casa Rosada is the office of the President of Argentina, and best known for its balcony from which Evita gave her speeches.

The Casa Rosada was originally a Government House on the left, and a Post Office on the right. The two houses were later on joined, which is why the Casa Rosada is interestingly asymmetrical.

We posed for a group picture across the Casa Rosada which I pulled from their Facebook Page.

There are many different theories/explanations on why the color of the house is pink. One of them is that it is a mixture of the colors of the two parties in Argentina - the white of the Liberals and the red of the Radicals - and symbolizes a unified country (I think, after the civil war).

Casa Rosada with pink lights at night

Painted on the ground in Plaza de Mayo are the white scarves of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, a group of women whose children "disappeared" during the war during the dictatorship. They protested in front of Casa Rosada, the presidential palace. There are supposedly still demonstrations by the Mothers that happen every Thursday at 3:30pm. I actually thought the walking tour was going to pass by here, and I was a tad bit disappointed that it didn't.

Nearby is this interesting building below, which is actually the Metropolitan Cathedral of Buenos Aires. It doesn't even look like a Catholic Church, the only cross you can see is the small one on top of the dome behind.

We ended the tour near El Obelisco (the Obelisk), Buenos Aires' most famous monument. The four sides of the Obelisk represent several moments in Buenos Aires history including the founding of the city and the inaugural raising of the flag. It's somewhat considered the center of the city and two important avenues intersect here. It's also a point for many kinds of gatherings - political, religious, entertainment, etc. It was actually here that the Argentines welcome homed the national football team after the World Cup. :)

The tour was a little over 3 hours but it was very enjoyable and informative (I didn't even post everything, just a few of the more interesting parts). After the walking tour we decided to go look for the El Ateneo bookshop, but failed. We kept asking around for it, but we ended up visiting two of the smaller branches, and couldn't find the main one. In the end, we just decided to look for it the next day and started walking home. We walked by Calle Florida which is a pretty popular pedestrian zone with lots of stores. We even stumbled upon some street tango dancers.

We tried to look for a restaurant near our hostel, but for some reason, everything was closed. We ended up walking back near the center and decided to have dinner at Café Tortoni. We weren't that hungry so we just had a light dinner...

...and finished it off with some churros con chocolate. :)