Buenos Aires Day 1

Besides the fact that it’s so much colder than Córdoba, our first day in Buenos Aires was awesome! We pulled up at the bus station a little after 7:30 Saturday morning and took a taxi to our hostel in San Telmo. Rachel had been awesome about doing her research and our hostel was great! We checked in and looked at all of the activities that they offered, signed up for a tour that afternoon, and then headed out to go see the city. We were only about six blocks away from the famous Café Tortoni, so we decided to head there for breakfast. The café was established in 1858 and is the oldest café in South America. It’s very elegant and decorated in an early 1900s style. We ordered café con leches and medialunas and enjoyed the atmosphere. Afterwards we set off for Plaza de Mayo. Just the walk down Avenida de Mayo (the road that connects Casa Rosada and their main congress building) was amazing; all of the old architecture is awesome to look at! Once we got to the plaza it was really exciting to get to see all of the famous and important buildings. I got to see the big white building in real life (which I learned used to be the old Spanish government headquarters and is called the Cabildo) that had been the surface of the big bicentenario light show that I watched on TV the first week I was here. Then, before we went into the plaza, we crossed the street to go into the Catedral Metropolitana, which is the main national cathedral. Of course every inch of the church’s interior was like it’s own piece of art! The ceiling contained hundreds of beautiful paintings and the floor was put together with mosaic tiles that formed little flowers. The cathedral also houses the tomb of General San Martín, so as weird as that kind of is we got to see it. After the cathedral we headed into the plaza. Even though the Madres only march on Thursdays, we got to see the monument that they walk around and see their posters (the Madres are a group of elderly women who lost children during the political unrest in Argentina around the 1970s who now march around a monument in Plaza de Mayo every Thursday in their memory). We then went to get a better view of Casa Rosada (Argentina’s “white house”), and after taking pictures we went closer and found out that we could actually go inside. We went in and looked around and got photo ops with the guards there. We then headed the other direction on Avenida de Mayo to go see the Congress building. After hearing about all of these places it was really cool to think that I was actually there seeing them in real life! Our next tourist destination was Avenida 9 de Julio, the widest road in the world. Although I never counted exactly, it has at least ten lanes going in each direction! We successfully crossed and walked by a few more important buildings, grabbed some empanadas for lunch, and then headed back to Café Tortoni to meet up with our tour group. Since we figured that we could probably conduct most of the general city tour ourselves, we opted for the “Tigre Tour.” This tour took us up to the northern part of the city to the suburb called Tigre where we got to ride a boat on the Paraná River. They told us that the area of town we were in had originally been where wealthy Porteños (people from Buenos Aires) had their summer and weekend homes, but is now inhabited year-round. The area was very nice and had a calm atmosphere. The boat had a nice little café and we all ordered café con leche and enjoyed the laid-back feel after our morning on-the-go. I met a group of three girls who were from New Zealand and we had a lot of fun talking. I told them that I had been to New Zealand a couple of years ago so we talked about their home for a while. Then, since they had been in Buenos Aires for almost a week, we talked about things to do around the city and what had been their favorite. I know that I’m supposed to be practicing my Spanish, but it was still fun to meet new people from a different country! After the boat ride we got off at a different dock and took a train to another small suburb called San Isidro where we stopped at a little artisan market in the train station for half an hour. Then we met back up and took the bus back to the city. At the start of the tour the bus stopped at about a million places to pick people up, but at the end there were only three options of places to get off. Therefore, the three of us girls got the opportunity to figure out the Buenos Aires metro system in order to get back to San Telmo. We had already decided to use it the next morning, so it was good to get familiar with it. It was all very simple and we made it back with no problems. Once back at the hostel we got ready for dinner and then went out to a place recommended in Rachel’s tour book. The food was of course good and we enjoyed each other’s company and practicing ordering in Spanish. After dinner we headed back and hung out downstairs at the hostel for a while and met people from many different countries and compared trips. It was a lot of fun, and overall it couldn’t have been a better day!