Buenos Aires

Wednesday 4 January 2012

We had a really good sleep. After a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausage, we headed out (about 10.30am). Since I still had the bad foot, we decided not to walk too far, or too quickly. We struck out for the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), this was only about 2km. As the Museo didn’t open until midday we had plenty of time to get there.  Along the way we saw a group of blokes outside an apartment building with a couple of large sofas. As all apartment buildings have a small frontage and door, not to mention a lift that can probably only hold 4 people, they can’t take the couches up the lift. So how do you get bulky stuff up one or more floors? Why a pulley system of course.

Just after The Albatross took this photo, a policeman came up to him and started speaking in Spanish. As we hadn’t got around to learning Spanish before leaving Perth, we weren’t quite sure what he was saying. However after picking up a couple of words like ‘photo’ and ‘bank’, we worked out we aren’t allowed to take photos of banks. There was a bank next door to the apartment in the photo above. After apologising and showing the nice policeman our photo, we moved on.
We stopped for a coffee before lining up for the Mueso. The Museo was good, but I expected something more, particularly as it had a good write up in the Lonely Planet.

A stop for lunch, by now it was about 3pm at one of the many cafés. Two big salad, two mineral waters and some bread was AR$104, this is about AUD$23.  From there we headed to the Mueso Nacional de Arte Decorativo which wasn’t too far away and on the way home. It sounded really good, but when we got there the sign on the door said it was closed until 10 January!

So we headed home, my foot was starting to ache. We walked through the Parque Las Heras which is one of the many green spaces in Palermo. Of an evening, families normally come out to meet and relax. What do they do during the day, they sunbake! The old people bring out their card tables and play cards.

On the way back home we stopped at the Basilica del Espiritu Santo (Basilica of the Holy Spirit) a nice looking church.

On our walks we had to cross Avenue del Libertador, it is a 10 lane one way road (rubbish its two way. T.A.)! Here are a couple of photos of what would be typical streets and apartments in Palermo.

Dinner! We decide to go to the restaurant that is beside our apartment, La Peca http://www.lapecarestaurant.com.ar Again the menu was in spanish, however we decided to choose the only two dishes that didn’t have descriptions. Rabas and Provoleta. We ended up with two delicious dishes, but none the wiser to which was which. So after stuffing ourselves full, along with a beer, we came home and googled it. Rabas is defried calamari and Provleta is huge bit of grilled cheese. Yumm!!!