Callum took over the writing of my blog for a couple instalments so this is his take on Buenos Aires:
Neither of us knew what to expect from Buenos Aires, but we both agreed that it was our favourite capital city in South America, and we could both live there if we had some kind of digital nomad career. Buenos Aires reminded us of a combination of Paris and Spain – big boulevards, grand parks and gardens, a great café culture—all with a Spanish flair.
We rented an apartment for the five days we stayed in the city which was in the Monserrat district. This gave us a ‘local feel’ but was close to the sites that we wanted to see. We probably saw the same sites that all tourists see (La Boca, Jardin Botanico Carlos Thays, El Ateneo bookstore, Museo de Arte Latinamericano de Buenos Aires) but we loved them all. El Ateneo is a bookstore set in an historic theatre with amazing murals inside. The stacks are all placed with precision in the spaces where the audience would have sat, and a café takes the place of the stage. It was a gorgeous place to visit. The botanic garden gave us respite from the heat of Buenos Aires and a chance to enjoy some nature. La Boca is a mega tourist trap, but the colours of the buildings are nice and people watching is always fun. The art museum may not have been the biggest exhibition, but seeing Latin American art is always different to the European/American historically important art that we usually view.
Buenos Aires was also a lucky destination for me, as my glasses were not suiting me anymore. We did a half-day detour to an optometrist in a neighbourhood quite far from where we were staying. The guy running the shop was great; he spoke excellent English (perfect for us lazy Australians who have really struggled to nail down Spanish during our time in South America), he used a machine that determined my prescription in 20 seconds (compared to Australia where it usually takes 15 minutes), was able to carve the lenses to the right prescription in the shop, and voila, I had new glasses within an hour.
I’m used to the Australian system where you have to book an eye appointment, wait in the waiting room for half an hour after you arrive, do the exam, wait for the prescription results, walk around the shop figuring out which glasses you want, only to find out that those glasses won’t fit that prescription for some reason, spend an hour second-guessing what glasses you want…all this usually takes me over an hour to go through, and then I need to wait a week or two for the glasses to be made, make an appointment for a fitting, and so on. I couldn’t believe that this whole process took less than an hour in Argentina, and, cost less than it would have in Australia.
One touristy thing we did in Buenos Aires was to go to a tango show in a restaurant/theatre, which was a block away from our accommodation. I’m not the biggest fan of these sorts of shows and they always feel kitschy to me, but Rachel loves a music and dance performance (just like I love hiking and she just kind of tolerates it most of the time). The stage was quite small and there was a pillar in the middle holding up the roof, so the dancers had to be quite creative to include it in their choreography. We got to see a mix of live music, different scenes from Argentina’s history of tango and of course the dancing for about two hours.
Reflecting on Buenos Aires, it is easily one of our favourite cities we’ve travelled to. We both felt that there was enough to do there for a month of slow travel, which at this point of the year seemed really appealing to us. We would both happily come back to Buenos Aires one day.
Travel Bugs 