Day 143 – Thursday 9th February 2006

Lucia and I got up early and set off for the city centre to go on a bus tour of the main attractions. For a while the traffic was bad and we didn’t think we’d make it but in the end we got there with time to spare as the tour was late seeing off.

The bus set off for one of the main plazas in the city, Plaza 25 de Mayo which has the Government Palace on one side and another innocuous looking building on the other, which was in fact where the Argentinean Treaty of independence was signed, thus for the Argentines it has a special significance.

The tour guide didn’t speak the clearest English in the world and I had a tough time following what was said as I was right at the back of the bus, so most of the history remains unknown to me. The next stop was the Barrio of Boca, and the Boca Juniors football stadium. Lucia didn’t like the fact that with so much history in Buenos Aires the tour should concentrate on a football stadium and I sort of understand where she was coming from, as we didn’t go in, just stood around outside looking at the concrete wall of the stadium for 15 minutes.

After the stadium we went to the centre of Boca. A very colourful district the area used to be the main port of Buenos Aires but nowadays it is more of a tourist district. The houses in Boca are all painted in various bright colours. This tradition began from the port days when the people – being unable to afford paint of their own – painted their houses in any colour available from the ships that came into the port, resulting in multitude of colour.

From Boca the tour went to the Barrio of Recoleto which is famous for its huge cemetery for the rich and famous. After the tour ended and we had lunch, Lucia went back to her house and I carried on wandering around the city, first heading back to the Recoleto cemetary. Here lies Eva Peron, but amongst the thousands of caskets and tombs I couldn’t find it, although I did only look for about 10 minutes.

I basically spent the afternoon wandering around the city as it seemed perfect for aimlessly walking and seeing the plazas and people watching. At one point there was a model doing a photo shoot in the middle of the road for some reason, so I thought I’d post a preview of whatever it was the shoot was for.

I eventually ended up catching a train back to the suburb of San Isidro where I was staying in the early evening, having some dinner and just chilling out.