Monday we said goodbye to Buenos Aires but not before another day and a half of exploring! Sunday we were up and at it and headed off back over to San Telmo where we spent our first two nights. We had been told they had a huge street market on Sunday but it was bigger than we could have imagined. 11 blocks of Defensa were pretty much shut down as people were selling a little bit of everything: from cheap t-shirts, to handmade leather journals, to antique tea cups, it had it all.
The San Telmo market just keeps going and going
Various wares being peddled at the San Telmo market
After walking through San Telmo market, out next destination was over at El Ateneo, the bookstore from the previous day. It was the start of our first organized walking tour in Buenos Aires, Architectural Tours off the beaten path. On our way over we stopped at what seemed to be homegrown Argentinian response to McDonald's in Mostaza. It was judged to be quite tasty for a fast food burger but hit the spot in terms of time and quality of food. I can't thank Jess enough for figuring out how to order it without ketchup!
We met up with our tour guide, Elisa, and the one other tour participant, Alice, who happened to be from New Zealand. Elisa lead us around to some neighborhoods and to see some buildings that did not appear in any of our guidebooks but were very cool architecturally. Both of our favorite building that we came across was the Palacio de las Aguas.
Palacio de las Aguas, a beautiful palace to hold water
This beautifully ornate facade was built with imported material from all over Europe. Inside it had a total of 1 room. There was no interior, this building was the pumping station for the Buenos Aires water supply and was built on part of the high ground in the city following a yellow fever outbreak.
We also saw a great sidewalk plaque showing the steps to the tango. No wonder it's always the first week dance on Dancing with the Stars (or Strictly come Dancing depending on your country of origin)
It's that easy!
Other highlights of the trip included a giant art deco shopping mall, which was once the produce market for the entire city, beautifully painted houses in honor of the greatest tango singer that ever lived, Carlos Gardel, a statue of a cow to honor the livestock heritage and random other off the beaten path buildings. We even got to ride the subway for part of the tour! It was our first subway experience. Luckily we got one of the new air conditioned cars at it was 90+ outside (30+ for our Celsius friends)
The painted houses
We found a supermarket on the way home and had our first home-cooked dinner of the trip. Pasta with Jess' favorite: broccoli. We completed the meal with the bottle of Malbec our AirBnB host left us.
Monday was our last day in Buenos Aires. It was a very low key day that started with a great lay in. (sleeping in). We headed over to Palermo(where we had eaten at UCO on Friday) to a place called Morelia to try the Argentine classic, pizza a la parilla. It's a grilled pizza. Think flatbread but with a much thinner, cracker-like crust. It was quite tasty. That crossed off the last of our Buenos Aires food list of steak, ice cream, empandas, dulce de leche and grilled pizza.
After lunch, we didn't have anything left we really wanted to see so we took a walk back through some of the various parks we hadn't been too. Also walked through a nice outdoor mall called Distrito Arcos. I got very excited when I saw this place had a Wendy's but left in utter shock and disappointment when the Frosty was not on the menu. It was another hot day so it was a relief to get back into the aircon. When we got back, we got our place cleaned up and got all packed up for the excitement that was to come later in the evening: our bus ride to Mendoza.
Wendy's but no Frosty :(
Since we have time on this trip, we didn't feel the need to have to fly everywhere we were going. As such when it came time to figure out how to get to Mendoza from Buenos Aires, there was a lot of talk on the travel websites about taking a bus so we thought we'd give it a go! We headed off to the bus terminal which was absolutely full of people. We're not overly mobile with a backpack on both the front and the back of us so we gingerly meandered our way to the bus bay. Since bus tickets are relatively cheap and this was going to be overnight and take 13 hours to complete, we decided to spring for first class. Definitely the best decision ever. It was roughly the equivalent of flying business class with TV entertainment, lay flay seats and an attendant that brought us drinks and hot meals (not very good).
Our luxury bus accommodations
Plenty of legroom and movies dubbed in Spanish!
We both managed to get a bit of sleep (Jess more than me, she can fall asleep in any vehicle!) and when we awoke we were only a few short hours from our next destination: Mendoza!
-Nick
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