The cruise company charters airline flights between Ushuaia and Buenos Aires for all passengers. It’s easier to collect folks coming from Europe for the boat in Buenos Aires than it is in the tiny town of Ushuaia. Since we were getting sent to Buenos Aires after the cruise, we decided to make a long weekend of it. And Hector, our family friend, frequent house sitter, and one who loves traveling, thought that joining us for the weekend would be fun, so he flew down from Seattle and arrived the day before us.
VRBO messed up the nice apartment I had originally booked, so we took a last minute place in San Telmo. It is the old town portion of Buenos Aires with great markets, shops and restaurants. Plus it was near to Kelly and family. So we took this place that has a cute couryard and good location, but the rooms were less than mid.
It did have a very cute cafe out front where we got breakfast every morning.
We asked Hector to scope out a restaurant for dinner the night we landed. He had flown in the night before, and we knew we would be in near dinner time and ready for some delicious Argentinian beef. Hector totally hit it out of the park, this was an amazing meal. Look at that piece of tenderloin – it was perfectly cooked and half the price we would pay for a steak a quarter that size at home.
First on the list to explore was La Recoleta Cemetery, hailed as one of the world’s best cemeteries, and top 10 most beautiful in the world.
From Wiki: Set in 14 acres, the site contains 4691 vaults, all above ground, of which 94 have been declared National Historical Monuments by the Argentine government and are protected by the state. The cemetery contains many elaborate marble mausoleums, decorated with statues, in a wide variety of architectural styles such as Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Baroque, and Neo-Gothic, and most materials used between 1880 and 1930 in the construction of tombs were imported from Paris and Milan. The entire cemetery is laid out in sections like city blocks, with wide tree-lined main walkways branching into sidewalks filled with mausoleums. These mausoleums are still being used by rich families in Argentina that have their own vault and keep their deceased there.
And no visit to La Recoleta is complete without a stop to see Eva Peron’s tomb.
Buenos Aires has excellent museums. Hector had visited one the day before, and we checked out the one next to the cemetery, the National Museum of Fine Arts. They have some great collections, including the second and third Monet that I have now seen. This headpiece struck me as something that might be very fun to wear.
That night was our big night out to Fogon. I was told by a local at home that it was a MUST do in Buenos Aires, so we had booked a nine course meal with wine pairings. It was incredible, and definitely one of the best food events of my entire life.
I think this was our head chef. She definitely delivered, whatever her role was. I can still taste that amazing smoked pork. Who knew that pine cones could add so much flavor?
Sunday was San Telmo street market day. And when I say “street”, I mean nearly every street in San Telmo. There was a huge section of antiques, the regular market, plus many streets of craft booths. At the end of a long day, I think Hector and I outlasted everyone else. Never have I seen more market booths than I can explore.
Look upper center in this pic – those are all craft booths blocks ahead. There are that many more behind us. Argentina, having such a huge cattle industry, has leather and cow hide products, plus dairy and chocolate, wine, and so very many crafts. Our only problem was lack of any space in our luggage.
Our treat for the last night was a Tango show. No visit to Buenos Aires would be complete without Tango. And this was a super fun dinner show. It was a history of the dance, from it’s beginnings to modern day, with a really good house band playing authentic music. It was all touristy, but also lots of fun.
Monday was a late night departure and overnight flight, so we checked out of our hotels and booked a city sight seeing tour. What we saw was an interesting city. Buenos Aires central has 3 million people, and the metropolitan area has 15 million. Our bus took us around the core, and what we saw was so many different city districts, from ultra modern to old town. The traffic was mind boggling, but never stalled – there were huge wide boulevards, between 6 and 10 lanes of traffic all flowing the same direction.
We knew we were leaving beautiful spring weather in the southern hemisphere for cold, dark and rainy Pacific NW fall. But The Mountain was out for us as we flew in, and I was happy to see all the fresh snow. This truly was an absolutely epic trip, and we’re grateful that we got to experience a great variety of what South American has to offer with friends who mean so much to us both.
