Buenos Aires, Part Uno: City Centro

Hola, We’re back from our trip. IPhoto tells me I took 330 photos. Goodness.

Thus, I will be doing my blogging in installments.  First, I have a few pictures from volunteering two weeks ago. It was the first official week of spring, so Graciela asked me if I knew how to make flowers out of tissue paper so the kids could do something extra fun. I’m from Texas. It’s a Tex-Mex after school craft staple. I’ve been making tissue paper flowers since before I could read.

Here are some pictures of the children under my craft tutelage.  We got locked out of the community center, so we had to sit on the ground outside. It worked out though. 

Zig came too. Here are some pictures of him playing with Jesus and this other kid. I asked the other kid what his name is and he said he didn’t know. He was either really confused or my Spanish accent is so bad he didn’t understand the question. I expect the latter.

Jesus is my favorite little kid, and one of three who’s names I can remember. (Jesus, Lautaro, and.... Brian. I think there’s a Monty Python joke there.) Whenever we do crafts, he makes them for his mom. He also tries to steal just about everything he can fit in his pocket. Gotta keep your eye on those crayons.

Also, I learned something new because Zig was there. In Argentina, the kids call teachers “seño.”  According to Zig, in Mexican Spanish, this means dirty old man.

While we were out of town, Helga went on vacation to Angel and Valeria’s house. She LOVED it. I’m not joking. They didn’t torture her like Zig does. That was a major draw.  Angel said that after a day, she was following him around the house.  Zig needs cat sensitivity training.

Our journey began with a 20-hour bus ride from Bariloche to Buenos Aires. Not as bad as you might think. The bus was double-decker with fully reclining chairs. We also picked the seats in the front on the second story, so we had an excellent view and plenty of legroom.

Drawback: apparently buses only serve white foods. EVERY food item was white. Look at that plate, it has FOUR pieces of white bread on it.  Even the meat loaf had white cheese covering it. Can’t I have like a carrot or something?

And now, BUENOS AIRES!!!!

We arrived on Sunday, and for the first three days we stayed in a hotel in the City Center.  It wasn’t the greatest hotel to stay in character-wise since it is surrounded by office buildings, but Zig had to take the GRE nearby on Tuesday so it was convenient for that. And WAY more quiet than a hostel. And it was close enough to walk to some interesting stuff.  And they had an excellent breakfast buffet.

Our hotel was a block away from Calle Florida, apparently THE place to shop. The mall has fancy murals.

 

 

We spent Sunday evening around there because nothing else was really open. We saw Inglorious Basterds (thats how its spelled, I didn’t mess it up), in the original language with subtitles in Spanish. Unfortunately, half the movie is in French and German, thus forcing me to read and comprehend the Spanish subtitles. It went pretty well actually! It was a really good movie.

First thing Monday morning we walked to Puerto Madero to buy our ferry tickets to get to Uruguay. But that’s for a later installment.  Puerto Madero is an old port that nobody really uses anymore. According to Lonely Planet, when it was designed it was a state of the art, modern port. Then a couple of months after it was finished, boat sizes increased dramatically, rendering it completely obsolete. I thought maybe they could fit one cruise ship in there. Maybe.

Recently, Puerto Madero is being revived as the new hip and trendy place to be. There was a sushi restaurant.

Next we went to the Plaza de Mayo (I'm getting really fancy, the blue words are clickable!). We saw the Casa Rosada...

...and the Banco Nacional...

...and the Catedral Metropolitana de Buenos Aires...

...and the Cabildo...

...and also the Pirámide de Mayo.  The Pirámide is significant partly as a location of protests (we saw several while we were there, all at the same time but for different reasons). Most notable are the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.  These are mothers of Desaparecidos from the last military government in Argentina, which ended in 1983. Even though protests were banned during that era, every week they walked (and still do walk) in circles around the Pyramid wearing white headscarves in protest of the arrest and secret murder of the Desaparecidos during the Dirty War.  The graffiti around the Pirámide is also for this protest, and lists names of people who were disappeared.

Here's another picture of the whole thing for good measure.

We kept walking and easily found Buenos Aires’ giant obelisk.

We tried to go to Teatro Colon, Argentina’s national theater, and it’s closed until NEXT YEAR. Did they not know I was coming?  Here’s what we could see over the construction barriers.

Here’s the obelisk at night. It lights up!

Also, an amusing Burger King billboard. It says “Feel the music in the meat.”  Ok thanks Burger King.

Tuesday, Zig had his exam in the afternoon, so we spent a leisurely morning at the breakfast buffet.  His exam went really well. I went shopping, but sadly (or happily for my bank account) I still didn’t find anything to buy.

To celebrate the end of the GRE, we went to the famous Cafe Tortoni for cake. Apparently, Carlos Gardel ate there. It was quite tasty. Pretty much everyone there was a tourist, but I saw a door that some old guys kept walking through that must have led to a super secret room for authentic Buenos Aires old guys. Maybe.

I had apple pie, and Zig had chocolate cake.

After that we went to some churches. Here’s the inside of the Plaza de Mayo church. Now I don’t know much about architectural history, but it seemed to be a really bizarre combination of neoclassical and baroque.  The outside had columns and a pediment, and then inside was covered with gold and fat angel babies. What does it all mean??

 

I really liked the floor.

It has the tomb of San Martin. He’s a pretty big deal.

We went to the Manzana de las Luces, which is a block of really old buildings.  It has an elite secondary school.  Apparently if you go to elite secondary schools, you’re allowed to loiter outside and drink beer.

Our last church was Iglesia San Ignacio next door. It was nice. Some guy came in and asked us for money, so Zig gave him what he had in his pocket, some change. The guy said, “What do you expect me to buy with this? You don’t have anything else?”  Angel and Valeria said that when people ask you for money they expect more than 2 pesos. Hmm.

Ok, break time. I need a cafecito. End of Part Uno!