After a couple of minutes of wandering around the park, we meet up with the free city tour and the friendly guide introduces herself as Maggie. The united nations of tourists is assembled here, and after a brief introduction the tour kicks off. Almost immediately after we all notice two policemen accompanying two lady tourists. Our guide enquires what is going on, and informs us that they have been pick pocketed and we should be more vigilant.
The guide leads us around to the view of the congress palace building, and explains some of it's history. This is the place where Argentina's laws are debated and passed. Evita Peron campaigned for the right of woman to vote. They painted one of the rooms in the building in pink to commemorate this accomplishment. During the years of the military coup, the palace was closed altogether, only 2 people were working here and the military painted the pink room grey. The palace is topped with a copper dome, and was modelled after the congress building of the USA in Washington DC.
To the right of the congressional palace, is the Cafe Molino. The most noticable feature of the building is a small windmill, somewhat remiscent of the Moulin Rouge in Paris. It's a sad looking building, a shadow if it's former glory. Now inhabited by homeless people, it was abandoned by its a owners, a wealthy family that could no longer support the business. Apparently the politicians used to meet here in the old days, so it was a kind of second parliament. The guide explained there are plans to redevelop the building, but the process is very slow with reams of red tape to clear.
Next we we visited the impressive congressional memorial, built to celebrate independence. It features some fountains under repair, statues of various figures including some condors. The whole monument is fenced off to stop graffiti, public bathing and laundry.
The tour made a few more stops, at a copy of Rodin's 'thinker', and a map of Argentina indicating distances marked from that point to other places. The guide warns us to avoid the 'land mines' left behind by dogs. Apparently dog owners are supposed to pick up after their dogs by law, but the police do not really enforce the regulation. We spot an adorable friendly dog dressed in Argentina football uniform, apparently it is important for dogs to be fashionable in BA!
The tour heads back down ave de mayo. Maggie points out an interesting building, constructed by 2 Italian brothers who were worried that Europe would end, and decided to build a sanctuary for Dante's body. The building had exactly 100 unique rooms, corresponding to the number of stories in the Devine comedy. The building had 3 distinct levels, hell at the bottom, purgatory and heaven above. Maggie also explains that daily there are protests in BA, for any number of different causes ranging from higher salaries to free education etc. Fortunately, as today is a Saturday there are no protests in progress.
We continue on and cross 9 de Julio, dodging road works and crazy porteno drivers. Maggie points out cafe tortoni, one of BA's oldest cafe's. The queue is stretching out the door and people keep joining the queue. Maggie explains that coffee is a way of life for portenos, coffee is where they go for a work break, meet a friend. Like other places in the world, the portenos have a system for ordering coffee:
- cafe, espresso, indicated by making a small gap between index finger and thumb
- cortado, ordered by imitating a scissor actions with your index and middle fingers. Literally cutting the espresso with some milk
- cafe con leche, same as a flat white
- submarino, chocolate slab dunked into hot milk to make a rich hot choc. Apparently at cafe tortoni the choc is shaped like an actual submarine.
We proceed and down the road and end up at Plaza Mayo. At the center of this space is a monument, and beyond that the presidential palace, although we can only see it though a heavily graffitied fence. Maggie starts explaining more about the years while the military was in power. During that time assassinations, torture and detention of suspected enemies of the state was commonplace. Babies were taken from their mothers and given to military families. A group of affected mothers started to gather in the plaza as protest. They became known as le madres de mayo. To this day they are still meeting and trying to find their lost children. Several hundred have been located and re-united, but there are sill hundreds more, many in their 30s now. It must be a shock to realize your parents are not actually your biological parents, and most likely killed your parents and didn't tell you a thing. It seems reasonable that most children in this situation would actually prefer not to know.
The tour made a break and we had some submarinos and a dolce de leche ice cream. The tour resumed and we made our way to the obelisko. Once there, Maggie asked us to locate the nearest house to the obelisk. No one could point it out, and she showed us a house built on top of one of the office buildings. How the owner mangaged to get permission no one knows. The obelisk itself is iconic to BA, one of the largest in the world. The tour ended with a group photo and tips for Maggie.
We found a place for a quick lunch of empanadas, a form of pie before making our way back to the presedential palace. There we joined a tour conducted in Spanish and English. We made our way through a maze of state apartments, conference rooms, art galleries etc. The highlights were the balcony where the president addresses the people, and Evita did as well, and the the presidents office, which can only be seen on weekends.
We grab a coffee before heading back. After quickly changing to smarter clothes, we get picked up for our evening of Tango. We pick up some other tourists along the way (transfer is included in the show price), and arrive at a building fairly close to Plaza del Mayo. Up the stairs and we are shown into a rather small room with wooden floors, in a strange L shape. The room fills up pretty quickly - it seems we are not the only ones who opted to have a lesson included in our tango experience, in fact it seems more people than the staff are used to, around 30 or more.
When everyone is assembled, an excellent teacher using both English and Spanish tries to teach us the basics of the Argentine tango. We start by "walking" in lines round and round the room, then eventually the ladies and men are separated, and taught their different steps, before coming together to try it out. The music is intoxicating but the beat hard to follow, and we all keep bumping into each other in the small room, but we make it work and end up having a lot of fun and laughs, even building on the basics and adding some fancier steps. We also swap partners a few times or get a chance to take some pictures. We finish with certificates claiming that we are "novices" in Tango...
Afterwards we are shown into another room for the main event, a large stage surrounded by 15 or so tables. We are seated nice and close to the stage, and are joined by Nina, a rather soft spoken Australian travelling on her own. We order our meals and some more Malbec (Santa Ana this time). The service seems extremely slow, and some of the other tables already have desserts, while we don't even have bread yet... Eventually we get our food: a salad to start, followed by steak with veggies and finished with a dessert of our choice. Food is good, not great, and we are irritated that but the time we finally get our dessert, they have run out of coffee.
At some point during the dinner, the show starts, its mostly 3 guys and 3 ladies, in awesome tango costumes, which frequently change, supported by a charming older male singer and a band of 4 musicians. The show is excellent and we fall in love with the style and passion in the dancing.
Eventually we are taken back to our accommodation, tired but very happy, it's been an awesome first day in BA!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Calle Chacabuco,Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires,Argentina
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