On creation of 9th July avenue, only three buildings were left. A large mansion that is now the French embassy, the obelisk and this building where Eva Peron gave her resignation speech when she knew she was unwell. On the opposite side is a similar murial of her looking out smiling.
The Casa Rosada (Pink House) is the presidential palace, better know by some of us as the balcony the Perons waved from and the mention in “Oh what a circus”. You can see the size of Plaza de Mayo in front.
A little stroll round the area we dined in last night.
Cafe Tortoni. The oldest cafe in Buenos Aires, always with a queue outside.
Surprisingly for such a tourist place the menu was not in english!
The world just got smaller…… we had spotted a Del Amitri t-shirt on the cruise, and he turned out to be the chap selling their merch. Just ran into the couple again and, no he doesn’t know who the bonus signature we had a year ago is either (the one with the x beside)
Another tour, this time the city centre. There was a football game going on between the top two teams of the country, so every so often, you would hear a cheer. Thankfully the guide mentioned it at the start, otherwise others may have wondered what the noise was. We had a heads up as yesterday’s guide had mentioned he was likely to be ill and not take this tour!
Starting at the Congress building, of course the largest congress building in the world, designed based on Washington DC.
Buenos Aires, meaning good air, sits on the widest river in the world Río de la Plata. Argentina was named from the Latin for silver. Not that they found any, but that was the expectation.
We then headed down Avenue de Mayo, being the first avenue in the city, again by removal of blocks of buildings.
The avenue used to have the richest houses and hotels. With the Congress building, the presidential palace, the plazas and the avenue designed to all be in line, it also became the place for protests and therefore arostocrats moved away.
Barolo Palace was designed by Mario Palanti, who was obsessed with wanting to take care of Dante Alighieri’s ashes to take care of. Whilst he did not get them, he designed this building to pay homage to the Devine Comedy, recognising all of the various elements and numeric references and symbolism. The top part is of Indian design, and the very top has a lighthouse, only was so bright that it can only be used occasionally.
A matching building was constructed in Montevideo, however the owner wanted it to be taller, so it was by a meter.
There were only three sculptures of “the thinker” actually done by Rodin himself, one of which is here in the avenue.
Cafe Tortoni is also on Avenue de Mayo. It predates the avenue, however when they made the avenue, it just so happened to back on to it, so they moved the main entrance!
At one road crossing the avenue we had earlier seen and heard chaps calling “cambio”. The guide explained more about the position with currency. In the 90s, the exchange used to be 1 peso to 1 USD. People had bank accounts in both Peso and USD. The country, however, could not meet its debts and stepped up currency production at the same time converting all USD to peso, and in a couple of days, it was 3 peso to 1 USD. Also, a restriction of being only able to withdraw 200 peso in a day.
People then mistrusted the banks and thus the start of an official rate and an unofficial rate called the “blue dollar”. Cash is now kept under the sofa and credit does not exist. The largest note is 2000 peso, £2. You see people handing over wadges of notes to pay for things.
Our hotel has a famed rooftop bar. Not a bad view!
What a lovely city. We felt like we got to know it quite well in the time we had, though probably only scratched the surface.
Heather and Mark's travel blog 