Day 3 Tuesday 30th December

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We took the advice of the guide book and after a late start, went out to find breakfast and after passing some street art on the way,

we found a cafe just up the road from the Hotel serving a reasonable breakfast for 1/4 of the price at the hotel (inc fresh orange juice and medialunas - moon shaped croissants).

In an attempt to see the whole of BA on foot, we went on another self guided walking tour which started at the Casa Rosada in the Plaza de Mayo. Supposedly it is pink because Ox Blood was originally mixed with Whitewash in order to fix the paint although the tour guides have other more politically sensational stories for the colour. Evita Peron amongst others addressed crowds from the Balcony.

Now started a two mile walk down the Avenue de Mayo in order to see various buildings important to the history of Argentina

This is the National Bank

The Cabilado from whose balcony the first Junta was proclaimed in 1810 when Argentina gained freedom from Spain

(unfortunately graffiti is just as popular in Argentina as elsewhere in the world)

The Palacio Vera (Art Nouveau balconies)

Cafe Tortoni (just for Joan Bowen)

where we forced ourselves to have an ice cream and marvel at the paintings on the walls

and the rather nice glass ceiling

The Avenida 9 de Julio - a 10 lanes each way road through the centre of BA which seems to take ages to cross

You can see the Obelisk in the above picture - a rather striking multi purpose 67m tall monument erected in 1936 to the first (1536) and second (1580) foundings of the city of BA, the first raising of the national flag (1812) and the naming of the city as the Capital (1836).

A statue of Don Quixote (whose horse seems to have noticed something on the top of a nearby building)

The Castelar Hotel opened in 1928

The rather run down Art Nouveau Hotel Chile

The astonishing Palacio Barolo - a building

 

designed to represent Dante's Inferno with

the Lobby symbolising Hell (plus a rather nice Kiosk)

The Moreno Monument (the secretary to the First Government Assembly following independence from Spain in 1810)

A copy of Rodin's "The Thinker" (not sure why it is here)

The monument to the two congresses which laid out the foundations of the state of Argentina following its independence

The Congress itself

and finally the Confiteria del Molino (The Windmill Cafe) which closed in 1997 but like many buildings, is being "restored" (eventually).

Whilst we were out walking this afternoon, there was a constant rain of waste paper from the sky - it took us some while to realise that the waste paper was in fact pages from 2008 diaries torn into small pieces.

The paper throwers at work

Tonight we are going out for dinner in a nearby restaurant and to hear Tango singing, a Tango show with dancing will probably be on the menu later in the week.

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Tango update: Ruben Nativo is working hard to make it big in the Tango world! We went to a local restaurant which was known for Tango dancing and singing. Whilst there were no dancers on offer, Ruben Nativo was. It was more "karaoke tango" than anything else with him singing with passion to his CD backing track (which of course we could buy if we wanted to - all 18 volumes of it!). Anyway, the food was good and the evening will be memorable for us not understanding what he was singing about in an out-of-tune way.

On the way back we passed the street Tango dancers again who were far more entertaining and next time we see them, we will take a video to remember them by.

We have found that we are both rather sun burnt this evening, it did not seem to be a risk in late December despite the obvious heat and sunlight outside - so suntan lotion is a must when we got out next time (even though there is a 40% chance of rain forecast).