A beautiful flag and an interesting Cemetery..

The previous post on our visit to Argentina is here..

The second morning in BA, we started with some pictures in the hotel room (the attention to detail and the decor in our hotel was lovely!), had a nice breakfast at our hotel (they had really good yoghurt.. katti thachchi.. as it is known in our house) and were picked up on time by our private tour guide in his car.

We drove first to the Plaza de Mayo, the historic square. We got a history lesson, saw a really beautiful flag with the sun in the flag masking the real sun behind it. Then our guide gave us 20 minutes to go inside the cathedral and come back. 

The place was not crowded at all given it was a week day and a busy end of the year working day. This cathedral is beautiful!

Took a good 10-15 mintues to try and get the real sun to overlap the sun in the flag.. also my eyes started watering after staring at it through the lens.. our guide and the family was getting upset with this obsession to get a picture.. had to walk off.. sometimes time constraints and photography conflict.. went with the flow and moved on.

This was followed by a drive through the city to the Recoleta area. This place had a unique one of a kind cemetery where all the rich and famous were buried or entombed. It was like a collection of miniature Taj Mahal's in one place.. No simpler way to describe it. We did have to wait a few minutes to get entry tickets for the Cemetery (it was not included in the tour price and the ticket was pricey!)

War heroes to miliary generals to popular businessmen and their families.. you can find them all here in row after row of tombs!

The highlight was a Chemistry Nobel winners tomb and Eva Peron's tomb which came with a long story. I was impressed that both Jr. and the little one knew who she was! My tour guide was impressed with my knowledge but once I mentioned the movie Evita, he was not impressed..maybe I should have said "I learned that in history class!"

Apparently these tied up toilet papers were a sign of luck.. as was touching the nose of a dog statue.. the nose of the dog was shining because of all the folks who had rubbed it! (you can see it in the video)

After that we walked across the Cemetery to a 200 year old rubber tree and the "Before-After" picture collection that was in front of the tree. Watch out for dogs not on leash in this area. San had a tough time running all over the place and hiding behind me at the sight of every loose dog. 

A short video of the places covered in this post..

We were off to our next stop on the private tour which was also interesting.. will cover that in the next post. 

Tango at its best

The previous post in this series is here..

Not able to write the posts, one a day as planned as many other interesting things take precedence.. 

Our original plan was to be on an all evening tour of the city the day we landed. Given the weather, we moved to be a longer morning tour the following day and spent the early evening walking.

We still had the night and given Buenos Aires is 5 hours ahead of California, we were not going to sleep anytime soon. We did drop the little one at the hotel to sleep and myself, San and Jr. went to watch a Tango Show at the Placio Tango (Tango Palace). The original request from me was to take San to a Tango lesson. She passed on it and Jr. refused to be the backup. Guess I should have asked her first and maybe she would have signed up.. moot point now. 

We were going to see an amazing show. Tango is close to my heart. It was a favorite during my dancing days. No other dance brings out emotion the way Tango does.. the Rumba is a close second.  It was a 90 minute show that started late. The theater was amazing. We did not order food ( you can get tickets with drinks only.. if you don't drink alcohol you are paying a lot for lemonade and coke but the tables sell out fast!). It was a packed theater with no empty tables when the show started.

We did get a souvenir picture with some of the artists..

The performances were breathtaking. I was congratulated by both San and Jr. for picking a winner. However, we could not get a return Uber from the place to our hotel close to midnight and there were some unruly street urchins who were chasing us for money. Eventually we hailed a taxi and got to our hotel. The entire area near the theater district is beautiful. 

Enough with the words.. just watch the video!

strongly recommend this show for a late evening entertainment. When in Buenos Aires, don't miss watching an Argentine Tango show.. or if you are lucky, go take a lesson! 

An evening in Buenos Aires

The first post on this trip is here..

Before I start writing about our first evening in Buenos Aires, a few things for my fellow travelers. We went to BA with a stop over at Mexico city from SFO. 

For some strange reason, there is no concept of transit in Mexico City airport. Given every page in my passport is precious (and every renewal costs time and money), I like to avoid unnecessary stamping. We were not given a choice after landing in Mexico city and were directed to go through immigration. Luckily there were no baggage to transfer or we would not have made it. All we had was carry on bags! 

We stood in a long line (which moved okay) and there were most confused international travelers and no one to answer their questions. I asked the immigration officer why we had to get a stamp when we were clearly transit passengers and he acted like he didn't understand me. The family was pulling my jacket saying "don't start something you will regret. Let's go to the next gate as fast as possible!".. so off we went. 

Mexico city seems to be sprawling and beautiful from the sky! Someday we have to visit the place and see what sights are there to see around it. 

We did get to spend 30 minutes in a lounge as our connection was a little late. There we were introduced to what I call "Corn kuzhal".. basically thenkuzhal made with corn flour. It was tasty! Surprisingly have never had this before in the US.

We landed in BA and it was raining like crazy! Took an Uber to our hotel, Faena, which was located in what was being described by the cab driver as kind of a Bandra of BA called Porto Madera.  Land reclaimed from the water and fancy residences, and commercial real estate built on it. Apparently Messi had his apartment in this area (we were thinking.. sure Messi probably has apartments all over BA)! Our kids are not easy to impress as the driver soon found out. 

The hotel was fantastic. There was a catch. No microwave, hot water kettle or Fridge in the room. The staff brings you hot water, warms up any food you give to them to put in their common fridge.. you get the idea. They were very courteous and nice, but you had to give them a 10 minute heads up. It still worked out okay. 

We had warm idlis and packed pulav for lunch, made an early dinner reservation at Marcelos , a fine Italian place on the river front (where we were told there are veggie options) and had two hours to spend to walk around the riverfront. 

We sat at a local restaurant chain called La Panera Rosa (with pink umbrellas!) and had tea and hot chocolate.. interestingly, in BA, they call it a SubMarino where they give you frothy milk and a bar of Cocoa which you have to drop into the tall glass and stir.. it drops to the bottom and rises like a submarine is our guess... 

They put locks on the wires around the bridges.. we didn't get to ask anyone on why.. it did look pretty.

It was very windy and nice and we walked on both sides of the river, had a great dinner and headed back to the hotel. 

The view from our table was amazing!

The little one had had enough and wanted to rest.

We still had the rest of the night. So we made plans after dropping her to go on a night to remember.. 

Buenos Aires is beautiful! 

A short video of the evening..

The day before we flew out, the Peso had dropped to 50% of its value. We did not know how that would impact our trip. We did find that most things like Uber rides were really cheap. Food in fancy places were as pricey as expected. The people we interacted with were going about their lives, but they were very hospitable and extremely nice to tourists. We really enjoyed the local people and their culture. It was lovely. Just for that alone, would recommend folks visit this city!