1st stop - Argentina

Argentina - Buenos Aires- Tuesday 4th April - Monday 10th April 2006


You have all been requesting pictures of the holiday & what we are doing here is putting a few of the interesting ones up for viewing ... maybe it will inspire some of you to travel to these destinations.






Our first stop was Argentina where we spent one week in Buenos Aires the capital. What a stylish city. !!Reflecting back on the holiday BA was a major highlight. Beautiful buildings, tree lined streets, great food & amazing wine. I have been disappointed to discover that 10% of the wine from Argentina is exported & very little of this makes it to Australia.

It was on our first day treking the streets that we spotted the dog walkers with their packs of dogs. On the left you can see a pack of dogs tied to a window bar while the walker was delivering a dog back to the owner. Having a big dog is a status symbol even if the owner only has a very small apartment ... However ... you do need to keep an eye on where you walk (like Paris) the dogs need to have somewhere to go to the toliet & unlike Australia there is no requirement to pick-up the by-product.

One of the things that I loved about BA was the amazing colours of buildings ... yellow, pink, blue .... the building on the rights was next to an art gallery where I found a very cool picture by indiginous artist from up in the north of Argentina. It would have cost $900 (Aussie) to have bought the picture & Nick pointed that this would not be a great idea on the first day of our 6 week holiday ... I still regret not buying the picture as I had the pefect place for it in our house !!!! I will get over it one day .....

The Cementerio de la Recoleta we found very creepy ... this was dispite visiting in broad daylight. This was the place that the wealthy were buried in above ground morsuleums. As you walked around you could see the coffins in these tombs. It was at this cemetary that Eva Peron (of the "don't cry for me Argentina" fame). At the place of her burial there is only a very small plaque to acknowledge this is the place to find Eva, but it is easy to find as you can follow the trail of tourists making the pilgrimage to the site.

La Boca is the most colourful of the suburbs in BA. Built by the immigrants along the waterfront. I was not a huge fan as it was a major tourist hub with people tango dancing for the tourists to photograph but what turned me off was the stale smell of sea salt that you could not escape from.

The presidential palace in BA, where Eva Peron lived and opposite the palace were Bolivian farmers protesting for fair treatment in Argentina.

To Nick's great excitment we went to the soccer & saw River Plate play a smaller provincial team. Even if you were not a fan of the beautiful game you could watch the supporters who were passionate. Where the massive flag was coming down was where the main supporter group were located. They spent the whole game jumping around, singing & dancing. It was an amazing experience.

Our local guide for the game when asked what he thought about Australia knocking out Uruguay to proceed into the World Cup expressed dissapointment. He thought that an old team like Uruguay who had a rich soccer history deservered to be playing & not an up-start team such as Australia ... I still have my fingers crossed that we will do something in this world cup & prove him & other doubters wrong ...... Go Australia !!!

Most evenings in BA was spent by having a glass of local bubbles in the bar at "Home" Buenos Aires before heading out to explore one of the many great eating places in the suburb of Palermo. Palermo I found had a similar funky vibe to our old haunts of Fitzroy/Collingwood. "Home" Buenos Aires was the perfect place to have kick started our honeymoon. The staff were very knowledgeable on the local area & were always able to recommend a new place to eat depending on what we felt like. If you are interested in knowing more details about this cool boutique hotel -: http://www.homebuenosaires.com/home/

Breakfast at Home Buenos Aires was fanastic. Although after a few days of attempting to eat like an Argentinian I found breakfast only consisted of strong coffee & fruit juice. In BA we found that you really should not go out to eat until after 10pm at the earliest. On the first night due to jetlag we decided to have an early dinner at 9pm & found that we were the only people in the restaurant. So, eating breakfast even at 10am you still felt full from the night before.

The breakfast at Home were very cool as you can see to the right but by looking at me you can tell that I certainly was needing the strong cup of coffee !!

It was from here that we next moved onto Chile, however, Argentina is certainly on the travel agenda again sometime in the futue even if it is to drink the wine & eat the juicy steaks !!