Out and About in BA

So, we finally left our barrio (neighborhood) and saw a bit of the city. On Saturday we took a bus tour with other people from the embassy. It was a greatest hits tour of BA, and a great way to get a sense of the city and what else we wanted to go back to and spend more time at. The first stop was Recoleta neighborhood. In the middle of the neighborhood is the famous Recoleta Cemetery, where Evita is buried. It is a huge cemetery of all of these mausoleums for all these famous and rich Argentines over the generations. It is the family's responsibility to maintain the mausoleums, so there are some that are literally falling down because no one from that family is left to take care of them, and there are others that are just beautiful.

If you go to the Picasa pictures, there are some pictures of a big tree which is right outside the cemetery and was planted when the area was first developed. The tree is huge and the branches are held up with posts!

We then drove down the famous a 9 de Julio Avenue, which is a big wide avenue with parks down the center and a obelisk is the middle. After that it was off to the center of the city where the government buildings are. we saw their congress building (the one with the green dome), the presidential offices (the pink building) - which is the building where Evita gave her famous speeches from. The balcony on the left in the picture is the famous "Evita Balcony". The white building is the original "Town Hall" from when Argentina was a Spanish colony and the large building with the columns is the National Cathedral.

Our next stop was La Boca, which is on the water and where those colorful houses that you always see pictures of are. We didn't bring the camera on that stop - next time, we promise.

Finally we drove past Puerto Madero, a rehabilitated area of BA that is now very ritzy with restaurants and shops, and finally back past the parks and the zoo and back to the embassy.

So, now we have an idea of where we need to go back to and where to take all of our visitors when they come!