Adventures in South America: Buenos Aires, Argentina

After getting back to Buenos Aires from Colonia last night, I returned to the Hotel Melia, where Melanie met me after work, and we headed to our concert at Teatro Colon.

The concert was excellent, and the theatre spectacular, but we were hungry and had really come more to see the theatre than to watch the show, so at intermission we slipped out for dinner at a great place called Tancat.  It was packed so we sat at the bar and a lovely meal with some nice white wine and several plates of tapas.  The food was great, but I think I enjoyed the vibe even more!

Eventually we went back to the hotel and to bed, but I think our couple of hours at the restaurant was one of the most enjoyable dinners I have ever had.

Today, Saturday, Melanie had her first day off in twelve days, her only day off in BA.  We spent our late morning-afternoon exploring a bit of the city.

Melanie now wanted to check out El Ateneo, so we walked there, through a park and down Santa Fe Avenue.  It took a lot longer than when I had walked from there back to the hotel on Thursday, because we (read: Melanie) wanted to do lots of window shopping.

At the bookstore I was taken with something that I had been noticing throughout BA, which was a bit of an obsession with what we know as the Falkland Islands.  The Malvinas, as known in Argentina, even had their own section on the bookshelves!

Also, the islands feature on a 50 peso note.

While at El Ateneo, somewhat on a whim, I asked Melanie if she had any interest in checking out the neighbourhood of Recoleta and, in particular, the grave of Eva Peron.  She was in, so we walked about fifteen minutes until we were outside of this massive cemetery wall.

I did not expect the cemetery to be a fortress!  In the end we walked around almost the entire perimeter until we found this gated entrance.

Little did we realize that the cemetery is a whole lot more than just the place Eva Peron is buried!  In fact, her particular tomb was rather minor compared to many of the others!

Eventually we found Eva, who is actually buried at her father's family's grave.

I assume if you do a guided tour of this cemetery it could take all day.  There are so many obviously influential/famous/important people buried there, not to mention artwork, and interesting things going on in terms of religion, gender, family, politics, money, etc.

But, we satisfied ourselves with our self-tour and left for lunch.

At lunch I learned about this term "chopp."  Actually I still do not entirely understand it, but it seems to come from Portuguese and it refers to draft beer, but particularly draft beer served in small glasses, so that it is always cold.  In this case, when I ordered "chopp" it meant I was ordering two small beers consecutively.  Quilmes is an Argentinian beer which, according to Wikipedia has 75% market share in Argentina!

From Recoleta we took a cab south, past the national Congress . . .

. . . to this intersection, and before we were even out of the taxi it was obvious La Boca was a happening place.

It's famous for tango . . .

. . . as well as, obviously, lots of colour . . .

. . .  and these paper mache people, including Papa Francisco, who I am guessing is in a competition with Lionel Mesi as Argentina's most popular person.