A place where you can flush toilet paper

I told myself that I was not going to write about toilets on this trip, but it was so, so nice to be able to flush toilet paper down in Buenos Aires instead of putting in a little rubbish bin in the bathroom. Of course, now we´re in Iguazu and back to the rubbish bin, but those four days were fabulous.

Buenos Aires is fabulous for other reasons as well, of course. Shopping, for instance. The main tourist shopping area is Florida street and it´s full of leather and clothes and markets. Of course, latin american women and small and nothing fits me. Not the beautiful leather boots nor the lovely tops. They have some quite large shops where individual designers have their own little shelf or two each where I found a top and a skirt. Just as well because I´m really sick of the clothes that I brought with me. What kind of moron thinks three t-shirts will be enough? And I´ve bought a couple more along the way.

We´ve seen quite a bit of the Tango with lessons and a show the first night and a visit to a local tango spot where they were having a competition on the third night. We also visited La Boca and had a small tango show with lunch. La Boca is the old port area but is really really touristy now and is much smaller than I expected. I did buy a painting there though and Debbie got some jewelry.

I did a city walking tour with a bunch of others from our tour group while Debbie slept and shopped (she´d done the city before). We started at the place where Parliament sits (Wednesday´s only - what a life) and walked down past some of the lovely buildings including one based on Dante´s Inferno - can´t remember the name of it. We stopped at the Plaza de Mayo and the guide gave us some of the history of the dirty war and the mothers who still protest at the square every thursday. We encountered a number of protests on the walk, including one group who were letting off very loud fireworks every couple of minutes. Apparently there are 8 protests a day in BA on average.

We stood outside the Casa Rosada where the president works and saw the balcony from which Eva Peron spoke (and Madonna sang - which may mean more to some of you). Debbie and I went on a tour of the Casa Rosada on a different day - it´s usually closed but they have opened it for the 200 year celebration. In one room they have photos and brief bios of some of the important women in Argentinian history which was interesting. There were some great paintings as well.

The city tour also took us to the obelisk which is in the middle on the widest street in the world Avenida de 9 Julio. Actually, a street in Rio is wider but in some point in history the one in BA was the widest and no-one´s had the heart to break it to the Argentinians.

People in Buenos Aires tend to stay out late and I did my best but failed miserably. On our first night after the tango show, we went out to Palermo to a bar. We boogied for a bit and had a couple of drinks but by 2.30am I was ready to go home so came home. On our last night, we had dinner in a nice place in San Telmo. It looked a bit dingy but the food was really nice (I´ve never eaten so much steak in my life). We then headed back to Palermo to other couple of bars and drinks. Again, at 2.30am I piked and come home (we did have to get up and fly to Iguassu the next day).

One of the best things we did in BA was visit MALBA - a latin american art museum. Some really great paintings in a really nice gallery. The only disappointment was that they didn´t have many prints of the art actually in the gallery. Quite a few Van goghs and monets but who goes to South American to buy european art prints?