ajmatt blog

We’re traipsing about on our third day in Buenos Aires (BA). The first day is a bit of a haze, as we landed that morning and, though we slept well for an overnight flight, it was not nearly enough. We spent most of the day napping and wandering aimlessly, including a long walk down Calle Florida, BA’s pedestrian shopping center. There’s no photographic evidence, so I’m skipping straight to yesterday, which was our first full day of touring.

I uploaded about 170 pictures to our photo gallery, but there are a lot of monuments to sift through, so I’m including some of the highlights and linking to gallery pages with interesting photos.

First of all, we’re happy with the hotel. It’s off the beaten path and pretty quiet, which is nice. We landed a high floor, but the view is limited. We can spy on our neighbor’s roof top gardens (left), but that’s about it. The hotel loses power for a few seconds twice a day (BA is in a power crisis and the hotel switches to its own power supply), which makes me feel like I’m on a real adventure.

We started the day with a couple cafés con leche (I love the coffee here–dare I say it’s too strong?), and headed off to Recoleta Cemetery, which is famous mostly for Evita’s tomb (pictures at the bottom of this page).

Recoleta is packed full of ornate crypts and plopped in the middle of skyscrapers. Sometimes it’s hard to see where the crypts end and the city begins (left).

Some of the crypts haven’t aged well. I like the plants growing out the sides of this one (left).



Recoleta is huge; this gives you a sense of how deep it is (left). I was afraid if I wandered too far from Matt we would never find each other again.

After briefly walking in on a funeral procession, we headed next door to the adjacent church.



Though this isn’t the smallest door I’ve seen (see: Budapest), I do enjoy a short door wherever I can find one.

From there we walked along Avenida Alvear, lined with high priced stores, and after a brief stop at the hotel to get our coat liners (it’s so cold), walked across the city to Avenida de Mayo for more touring.

After lunch at the oldest café in town, Café Tortoni (steak sandwiches… do I eat them like steak or a sandwich? I’m so confused), we headed off to Congreso. We joined a Spanish-only tour of the building, and Matt tried his best to translate (about every time the guide mentioned a number).

The interior is impressive—this is where they hold Congress (left, plus more in the last three rows of this page).

I enjoyed the ancient card catalog in the library (left).

We took the historic A line subte back to our hotel (above).

And enjoyed our favorite part of BA culture, the pre-dinner nap. We both find Argentinean daily life easy to adapt to: sleep late, coffee, late lunch, coffee, nap, and a very late dinner.

We had dinner at 10:30 last night at an asador (meat/steak house), Las Nazarenas, which had a wide variety of beef cuts and a whole pig on the menu. We stuck to cuts of meat, and were served giant steaks, at least twice as tall as the ones we have in the U.S. The picture of the grill didn’t turn out well, so here is a picture of the restaurant’s barbecue pit.

More later, provided the wifi holds up.