Sightseeing and souvenirs

 Day 3.Sunday 23 November
Marathon sightseeing today.  Our guide. Gloria, turned out to be very informative and as we were only in a party of four, there was plenty off opportunity to ask questions.  We started with a minibus tour of the major sights, stopping for a closer look at the Cathedral, 

where the Pope was archbishop, the Pink Palace 

where Eva Peron gave the Don't cry for me Argentina speech from the balcony, various museums, art galleries, squares and historic districts.  The main thing about Buenos Aires is that nothing is more than 200 years old, they demolished the old buildings and rebuilt with strong European influence.  In particular, they wanted to emulate Paris and walking round the avenues and boulevards, it does feel like being in Paris or Madrid.  There are jacaranda trees lining every street and they are full of perfumed lilac flowers. The buildings are very grand with wrought iron balconies at every window.  The city is very flat as much of the land was reclaimed from the River Plate.  The Plate, plata, and Argentina both mean silver because the conquistadors heard the natives speaking about the silver they would find there.  In the cathedral, the altar is covered on all sides with decorated silver (see above). The main square is La Plaza de Mayo, May being the month of the Argentine independence.  The Pink Palace is that colour to represent the old buildings which were covered in mud mixed with animal blood. The share is full of trees bearing the national flower, the cebo, which is blood red but only has one petal. 
The interesting districts are La Palermo, where the houses are large and colonial and where football players and film stars live.  San Telmo is famous for artisans markets, La Boca has the stadia for the two main football teams, La Boca and La Plata and Porto Madero is like Docklands, trendy ex warehouses remodelled into apartments and restaurants.  The main street in the central area is 16 lanes of traffic wide and they had to demolish whole blocks of buildings to lay it out.  It has an obelisk at one end and a government building with a huge picture of Eva Peron at the other.

But what I liked best was the Caminito,  a small area of cobbled streets, largely for tourists now of course, where the shops, bars, market stalls were all brightly coloured and full of street life. 

Young men and women were dressed in tango outfits and available to be photographed with you in a tango pose.

  Gaucho boys with baggy pants, there's a story about the pants, were dancing to drum beats and everyone was smiling and so friendly.

Lastly we walked round the Recoleta cemetery where all the famous Argentine presidents, soldiers, writers etc are buried in ornate mausoleums.  And of course Eva Peron's family grave.

I tried not to cry for her as requested but did have a sniffle which our fellow tourist took a photo of.

With aching feet we returned to the hotel for a rest and then went out in the afternoon to the fine arts gallery which was a bit disappointing as all the exhibits were copies.  

On the way back we wandered through the artisans market 

which was lovely as all the goods were made by the stall holders and not tacky touristy souvenirs.  The local semi precious stone is the Inca rose which is a kind of soft pink and beige striped stone set in silver.  Earrings and pendants were bought by Lynn and myself as well as a handbag, ashtray, Nativity figures etc etc.
Another great steak, this time a shared whole fillet and another huge measure of Amaretto 

rounded off the day.  Really exhausting.