Buenos Aires, January 8, 2016

Friday, January 8, 2016

Buenos Aires

So far, so good. We left Atlanta Wednesday night about 9 pm and three movies, two meals and a few glasses of wine later arrived in Buenos Aires a little before 9 am. It's always a good start to a trip when your luggage also arrives!

We're staying in a big Sheraton in the city center. BA is made up of a number of different neighborhoods from posh to commercial to extreme poverty. The economic divide is wide and quite pronounced. Currently inflation is at 30% (every store, restaurant and street merchant is more than happy to take Euros or US dollars) but the people are trusting the newly elected president to solve that.

Yesterday was a blur of naps and a little exploring. We're a short block to Florida Avenue, a pedestrian-only shopping street that stretches for a mile or so. There is a multi-story upscale mall in an old building with a painted dome topped by a glass roof. The population of the city is 3 million and it seems that they're all out on the streets or in the shops. We've stood in a few lines for this and that, but everyone just patiently waits their turn. Every store seems to have plenty of staff. Lots of American and European brands and oodles of chocolate shops and fancy-shamcy baby stores. We had lunch at an Italian restaurant close to the hotel. The population is mostly European descent, predominately Spanish and Italian.

Today we took a city tour with our guide during our stay in BA, the lovely, charming, 30-ish Eliana. The city covers a lot of real estate, but we managed to go from one end to the other and hit a lot of the high points. We spent some time wandering through tiled streets of the Recoleta Cemetery, which is not at all as creepy as it sounds. It's a "city" of ornate family mausoleums that date back two centuries. They're crammed in, some still in use, some outlasting the original family. Eliana told us that even the abandoned mausoleums cannot be torn down. If they fall down, they can be removed and the land resold but since they're built of stone, marble &/or granite, it's going to take a long, long time for that to happen. A new law has been passed to solve this thorny issue, sort of. If the annual tax has not been paid for 99 years, the mausoleum can be removed. As I said, a solution, sort of.

Recoleta is a lovely area with parks and trees and well-kept residences. And dog walkers! It's the Argentinian version of doggy day care. Each day the dog walker takes his charges (15 dogs at a time is not unusual) out for three or four hours. I did not see any pooper scoopers.

We drove by the polo fields, the La Boca soccer stadium, embassies, palaces and a slum or two with stops at the Plaza de Mayo, the heart of the country and chosen demonstration spot for anything and everything but usually about money, and the Carmenita, home of the tango. At the Plaza we rode the subway (first built in 1800s and still going strong, 5 pesos per ride at 13 or 14 pesos to the US dollar, this week) a couple of stops to the one of the most traditional and oldest cafes in BA, Cafe Tortoni. All wood and marble inside and still very popular. Gave us a chance to have a coffee and snack and chat with others in our little group.

We've learned that education is free in Argentina, the average salary is $1500 US per month, there is a large underground economy called the Black Economy, gas seems to be approximately $4/gallon and the traditional greeting is one air kiss, right cheek to right cheek.
I've also learned there is free wifi in the hotel lobby (when I'm queen, it's going to be available everywhere) so I'm heading down to get this posted. Adios for now.



Dinner and tango show tonight, out to an estancia on the Pampas tomorrow to see the Gauchos strut their stuff.