BA was a subdued spot for us. The heat followed us from Mendoza, and most days it was at or above 100 F, and in the 80s at night. Thankfully our room had a/c, or we would have been unconscious most of our stay. Instead we tended to hide inside from about 11am to 6 or 7pm, except for small excursions to the market or to buy an empanada. Luckily BA is all about night life, so restaurants often didn't open until 8pm and we didn't really miss much during the afternoon siestas in a nice cool room. We did find this at a market:
Besides the heat, our budget for this part of the trip was nothing but fumes. We stayed local and cooked most of the time, avoiding the expensive tango shows and fancy restaurants. Our hostel Tercero del Sur is in the San Telmo neighborhood, which is a pretty nice spot to be. Most of the roads are cobbled, there are lots of antique shops and old buildings, and there are tons of pizza joints, including a chain with fairly cheap and decent food across the street. Italian influence is big here. The guys behind the counter even shout at each other like Italians. San Telmo also has a historic mercado, mostly full of tourist trap junk, and a Sunday craft fair that stretches for over a mile. The streets are lined with tables and people relaxing with a beer (always Quilmes). Several parillas are in the area, and we had our best beef since Santiago. And there was a tasty Indian restaurant around the corner. Not a bad place to be stuck.
We also wandered into the downtown on several occasions. There is a pedestrian strip lined with shops and eateries (and also Starbucks and McDonalds). The main square has an incredibly pink building. And the waterfront docks/locks have been turned into a pretty swanky section with high-rise condos and top-end restaurants, all across from the ecological park and the river. The fancy pedestrian bridge is the Puente Mujeres. If it looks a lot like the art museum in Milwaukee, it's because the same guy designed it.
Overall, BA struck us as basically an American/European city. Not that we've ever been to Europe, but essentially BA is just another modern western city. The pockets of antiquity are of European heritage. There is even a statue of Cristobal Colon (Colombus). That kind of statue wouldn't really go over well in a place like Bolivia, Peru, or Ecuador with their sizable and vocal indigenous communities. BA felt like a place out of place for us, not really part of South America as we came to know it during the first 2.5 months of our stay. Chile felt the same, but Argentina really capped it. Not that it wasn't a cool city--there were lots of great places to see and food to eat--but it just didn't feel feel like South America, at least as we had come to expect it to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment