Old city charm and an odd Obelisk

The previous post in this series on our travel in Buenos Aires is here..

For some reason, I decided to use iPhone photos for the most part, that too without any processing and my FIL promptly told me that my photos are usually a visual treat and my standards are going down.

Given few people still read this blog, decided to use nicely cropped, edited photos for this post. It is still mostly iPhone photos. Hope it gets the bar back up again..even if slightly..

After the cemetery visit, we drove to La Boca, which is not an upscale neighborhood but is one of the oldest places in Buenos Aires that was populated, mainly by waves of immigrants. There is an old world charm in this place that is very unique! Parts of it, the walls, the doors and windows reminded me of walking around old neighborhoods in Mylapore. In fact one of the steets brougt back memories of TSV Kovil street. My brain does a number on me when in new places and connects random things. So walked around in a daze absorbing the sights, sounds and smells.

one of my favorite shots on this trip!

Caminito was interesting.. with the center piece being an ice cream shop. There was a long line so we skipped the ice cream. We were also on the clock for the private tour. 

this photo courtesy of our tour guide who was trying to direct folks to be out of the shot.. he did a great job!

Then we moved on to San Telmo area and the market. The entire place was full of antique shops. Old books, LP's, cameras that went extinct, Simpson's bobble head dolls, crazy stuff that used to be in the last bottom row in Navarathri golus when I was a small boy.. it was amazing!

we went into a lane that had these umbrellas.. it had more of a French vibe to it than the Spanish vibe we expected.. the place started getting crowded, given there were offices there.. we managed to take a few photos 

Once the crowd saw what I was doing with the next shot, everyone was trying to copy it.. was telling the family that I take it as a compliment and am not the least bit offended.

After the family decided to eat some empanadas at one of San Telmo's hottest places, we made a move to see the Obelisk and what is dubbed the Times Square of Buenos Aires.

There was no parking, so our guide stopped the car on the road side and said "10 minutes is all I can wait if you want to run across and take pictures".. and we did manage to do that and get back, jump in the car and go back to our hotel area. 

this whole obelisk thing was weird. It was in the middle of the busiest part of the city and the barricades and barriers around it made it less appealing. There were too many walking signals around and the pedestrian and car traffic was a disaster waiting to happen. Also there is no way to get a decent shot of us and the Obelisk given the short distance in front of it. The locals seemed to be very happy with the monument.. we were all wondering how it fit with the rest of the area.. it stuck out like a sore obelisk!

the kids never share their pics with me.. and I am definitely not allowed in their social media circle.. but I do have these type of memories.. watching them grow into confident young women!

we stopped at a few more places to take photos of monuments (our time was up and I made a request.. so it was nice of our guide to do this!) 

we even stopped by the area where all the big hotels are.. the lobby decorations in Buenos Aires are interesting..

We thanked our guide who was a really nice person and ate leftovers from what we had packed for lunch at the hotel. Had to finish the food anyways as we were to check out. We had two hours to spend before our ride to the airport. San and the little one stayed in the hotel restaurant after checking out.  Jr. and myself decided to go back to the waterfront to get a taste of the famous Luciano's ice cream. It was a 40 minute walk one way but we made it, had ice cream and got back in time to catch our ride to the airport... only after coming back to the US did we realize that this ice cream is from California but has become very popular in Buenos Aires!! 

the dulce de leche here is apparently a hit.. so we had to get a taste of it. It was yummmmmmmmmyyy!

we walked past the boats (which were museums .. didn't realize it the previous evening!)

We made it in time for our flight.. but it was late. So we ended up in the crowded airport for an extra two painful hours before finally boarding for Porto Iguazu..

A video for the last part of the city tour. We covered a lot of places in 4 and a half hours! 

Would definitely recommend this private guided tour of Buenos Aires through Viator. Our guide was Martin and he was a really sincere guide! Not sure if you can ask for him through Viator tours. . . 

We said bye to Buenos Aires as there was not going to be any more walking around the city.. we had no idea.. 

The whole trip was all about Iguazu falls. Have way too many photos and videos to process from the next day of the trip. The next post on this series will have to wait..

A Bus tour in Parts - Emporio and Perissa Black sand beach

The previous post in this series is here..

After the ruins our next stop was the largest village in the middle of Santorini island called Emporio. It included a small castle, beautiful small walkways (that reminded me of the Galli's of Varanasi) and a village center with a rebuilt Church.

This all blue and white combination gave us the best family pictures on this trip.. 

we had a good laugh over this sign..there was a lot of potential at this place.. but a lot of hard work to be done.. given my history of house remodeling projects, the family kept mocking me for a good 10 minutes..

fortunately we arrived at the next photo spot 

The whole place seemed to be desolate with no inhabitants (a few of these old places are now Airbnb's apparently) but we did not see a single resident in that walk. 

After touring the old Emporio area, we walked back down and headed to Perissa. Saw this "cheese" church on the way down!

There is a beautiful black sand beach here and a lot of eating places around the beach. If you eat in a restaurant, they let you use the beach umbrellas for free (in some cases 10 Euros).

We observed that most of the folks who were waiters and ushers in these restaurants were Syrian. There is some Syria Greek connection we don't know about. These folks were extremely nice and kept making jokes and made us laugh as we tried to decide our lunch location..

it was a bad idea to go into the water after a heavy lunch.. but went into the water with the kids for a good 30 minutes. That was part of the tour and the break. Almost everyone in our group had someone from the family go into the water as the rest of the party sat on the reclining chairs and were taking photos of their feet while sipping drinks!

Jr. ventured into the water with me (as did the little one for some time) and took pics of me doing yoga poses on rocks. One of these is very slippery and I got my legs cut up in a few places.. 

It was a pleasant afternoon, thanks to the clouds!

Post water, we had some yummy ice cream and we drove off to our next stop! 

 

We said bye to Aquarius and started back on the bus tour to the next stop..

saw more churches and blue domed houses on the way..

A short video of this segment of the trip..

The next stop was a drive up the hill to the tallest point on the other side of the island with a lot of weird history!

An evening in Athens

The previous post in this series is here..

After that Viator tour of the Acropolis followed by a late lunch and a nap, the family informed me that we were going to a very nice place for dinner.. it was a 30 minute walk from our Airbnb towards the old city square. They were all nicely dressed too. I had not recevied the memo! My options in that place were going to be limited. So I coaxed San to go with me to Babaji, the Desi place that had been closed earlier at lunch time.. by saying "you will get good Chai there!". Once in the place, I decided to order a Tandoori roti, dal, rice and yogurt.. and gobbled it up as fast as I could.. the rest of the family was not pleased..but a man with allergies has to take care of himself in such situations! Definitely recommend this place.. Everything I ate was just mouth watering!

We walked to the place (Taverna Klimataria), only to find that it was fully booked for a party. There was live music going on inside as well.

The kids were really disappointed. We decided to quickly find an alternate place to eat. Vegetarian food was not easy to find. However as we walked past the old square there were a few middle eastern guys waving us into a restaurant saying "you vegetarian? we have vegetarian!". Guess we were not the first desis with that hangry look walking past the place!

The food options were limited but we made the most of it! Once something is in the tummy, the family spirits were higher. The food was actually good and we walked around, had some Gelato (Buffalo milk ice cream!) with other snacks, visited an old small Church in the middle of the square and finally walked back to the Airbnb.

A very short video clip! The market and restaurants and walkways are lit beautifully and the old buildings give this a very nice vibe!

Then there was the bitter realization for the kids.. (had saved the screen to remind myself of their protest and yelling)

Promises were made that this would be the last time ever that an alarm was being set for such ungodly hours (their words, not ours). At the time of writing this blog, that promise is already known to be broken on our most recent trip as we had to catch yet another first flight out.. 

We were on the first flight out to Santorini the next morning.. it was goodbye to Athens!