Buenos Aires, Argentina

Argentina and Bolivia have been on our list of places we’ve wanted to visit together ever since Jim had the opportunity during his working days to travel in South America (20years ago!). We decided it was time to come, we’ve limited ourselves to northern Argentina and southern Bolivia - Buenos Aires is our first stop. We’re staying in a small apartment in the San Nicholas neighborhood with quite an inner city vibe (but friendly and safe). We’ll be here four days giving us ample time to get oriented and explore this immense old city. The woman who owns the apartment we’re staying in gave us her Subway card, once loaded we made our way to one of the many stations nearby. The system here is supposedly the oldest in South America and I think we likely experienced one of the ‘heritage’ lines! The schematics are super easy to follow, it didn’t take long to get oriented. Our destination yesterday was a visit to the ‘Recoleta Cemetery’ which of course meant also exploring its surrounding neighbourhood. The cemetery was established in 1822, encompassing five hectares with majestic mausoleums made of marble and decorated with sculptures. It’s quite impressive! In the evening we went to a tango show with live music accompanying five pairs of dancers. The show was held in the barrio of San Telmo which is purported to be the birthplace of tango in the early 1900s. It was an excellent show, actually exceeded our expectations, yay! The evening turned out to be a very late one for us, didn’t get back to our apartment until well after midnight! Today was a less eventful day, the weather cool and breezy so our plan was to find the Sunday mercado in San Telmo. We took the subway out to barrio where we were last night and just wandered and explored it in the daylight. Tomorrow we’ll find the barrio ‘Boca’, another famous neighbourhood known for diversity and colourful houses.