Observations made in the last 24 hours:
- Porteños (people of Buenos Aires), including the children next door don't seem to go to bed until loooong after midnight
- There are less Hitler clones than Jeremy led me to believe. Guess the efflux from Brazil hasn't happened.
- 90% of everything is pizza
Things I haven't figured out yet:
- Where to buy a damn vegetable
- Why my sense of direction is non-existent even when the streets are laid out in perfect grid formats with 100m between each block
- How to communicate (in Spanish, and in general)
In order to try to level up our orientation skills and also learn about the city, we did a "free" (tip the guide a self-elected amount) 3 hour walking tour of the central city. Our guide Victoria was great, and we learnt some very useful information about how to get around without getting totally lost, as well as a concise overview of the last 200 years of Argentinian politics. Turns out we really have a knack of picking holiday spots which have had really fucked up political situations in its recent history. On a lighter note, much squeeing over cute buildings.
Palacio del Congresso - fancy schmancy congress building. Apparently the only person who can enter through the front door is el presidente, whereas the rest of the plebs go in through the sides
Moustache man! First socialist member of parliament in the Americas. Everyone knows that the left wing has the best facial hair.
One of three originals of Rodin's "Thinker" sculptures, chilling out in the park, having a ponder
People here are really into Eva Perón. REALLY into her. I need to watch that Madonna musical to brush up on my knowledge (because artistic license > historical accuracy, clearly)
So pink! The Casa Rosada, where the president hangs out, is supposedly pink because the original paint used when it was first built had cows blood and fat mixed into it to make it longer-lasting.
These dudes walk from the pink building to the nearby church every 2 hours, to guard the tomb of Saint Martín
After the walk, we wandered about looking for somewhere to have lunch. Bereft of our guide, we were extremely bewildered, and even more so once we sat down and tried to decipher the menu and also figure out how the hell things like cover charges and tipping worked. We eventually managed to order a couple of set meals - spaghetti, huuuuuge glass of wine (filled to the brim, none of this only to the mark 1/3 way up the glass bullshit), and a shot of limoncello for $8 AUD for me, and an empanada, 1/4 of a Portuguese chicken, dessert, big mug of beer and shot of limoncello for $11 AUD for Jeremy. The wine consumption coupled with my jetlag meant that trying to work out tipping was pretty much impossible, and we ended up just giving them a random amount of money and running away. The fact that they didn't chase us down the street meant that we probably got it right.
The waiter asked us something along the lines of "cream or dulce de leche with your flan?". My brain froze up and the only thing I could remember was "Por que no los dos" from the Old El Paso ads. Good job, brain!
We got a bit lost and ended up walking for a good half-hour trying to find our way home again (in reality, it was only about 2 blocks away), after which the trauma + heat + intoxication + jetlag meant that we had to siesta for about 3 hours to regain our sanity. The evening was spent navigating to a bank that wouldn't charge me $10 every time I wanted to take out money (which is pretty often in a country where the daily withdrawal limit is about $170 AUD), and looking for a dinner that would include some sort of plant matter. We settled for a cheap pay-by-weight takeaway place a couple of blocks away (hooray for salad!). I spent the evening reviewing the (few) photos I'd taken during the day - I'm too paranoid to bust out my camera in the open most of the time, as apparently muggers and pickpockets are a big thing here. Nevertheless, here are some bonus shots of cute balconies.
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