Welcome to the City of Good Air

It's our first day in Buenos Aires. We arrived late last night at the Reina Madre hostel and went to bed shortly afterward. Catherine had a little more trouble sleeping since the hostel has a number of semi-permanent residents, it was a Saturday night, BA is known for it's night life and our room was right beside the kitchen.

Images from Buenos Aires are in the album.

In the morning, we woke up slowly and went searching for breakfast. In particular, Catherine found on the net a cafe that was supposed to have gluten free options just a few blocks away so we headed there. They weren't very gluten free, but they pointed us to a shop that sold gluten free items. It turns out that there are a number of dietary food shops around the city that have things for celiacs, diabetics and people with other dietary issues. They aren't restaurants, but they carry some good packaged food. Catherine found some rice crackers that she's now addicted to.

We ended up back at the original cafe to actually sit down and have breakfast. I had a muffin and Catherine was originally going to have a smoothy, but decided to have eggs with ham instead. When her eggs came, they were very undercooked. This is the second time she had undercooked eggs in Argentina. Maybe it's a regional thing?

After breakfast, we headed towards the Recoleta cemetery. It's a truly unique cemetery. We ended up hiring a British ex-pat to guide us through since we were going blind. He had an interesting setup where he would give us the tour and then we could pay him whatever we felt was appropriate. I think it's actually a good business model on his part because people will tend to give more when given an option like that and his English speaking audience hails from richer countries where guided tours are probably more expensive than in BA.

Anyway, the cemetery is a little nuts. It's entirely mausoleums, packed in beside each other. Each mausoleum is owned by a family in perpetuity. They're a small annual fee to pay for security, but all the maintenance and work on the mausoleums is up to the family. Now, some of the families die out or some cannot afford to pay for proper maintenance (or don't want to), while others invest to the nines. So you literally have some where the roof has caved in, or bones are just shoved into crates willy nilly. At the opposite extreme, there is fancy stained glass, carvings, etc.. Each mausoleum has the rights to the hut above ground, but also three floors under ground, including under part of the pathway. So you can fit a lot of relatives in there. It's also still very active. Our guide said that last weekend, there were 3 burials.

There are also a few state supported sites for famous people who didn't have a family crypt. People like the first democratically elected president of the country, or the leader of the rebellion for independence from Spain.

Around the cemetery on weekends, there is a very large artisan market. There was everything from jewelry  to mate cups, to toys, to clothes, to food. Catherine found some fun items and was able to cross off one stocking stuffer.

After the market, we walked to a local empanada joint. It was a cozy place that reminds you of an old beer hall or bodega. Lots of wood. Wine casks hanging from the ceiling. I had 3 fantastic empanadas, which Catherine was able to have a tamale, which was surprising since it's a Mexican food and not usually found this far south. We also had a medium carafe of wine that was served in a white porcelain penguin. The wine came out of the penguin's mouth.

After lunch, we headed towards the retiro plaza. There was a monument to the people who died in the Falkland Island war in the early 80s. Argentina has a complex about the Falklands. They're a bunch of rocks off the southern Argentinian coast that are so far south, they are only good for raising sheep (although oil was found recently offshore). They're part of the UK and I'm not sure of all the history, but I think that they are basically used in Argentinean politics to deflect from poor conditions at home. In the early 80's this peaked when Argentina sent an invasion force that was promptly destroyed by the British. Today, you can only get to the Falklands by flying for Chile, or you can take the direct flight from RAF Dover, which has to refuel in the Ascension islands.

After looking around the plaza, which also has an amazingly large gum drop tree, we did a quick tour of the nearby museum of military uniforms. It contained uniforms and weapons for a vast range of times. Quite a collection. Then, we walked to the museo del belle artes, which is small, but contains some great works by Gaudain, Degas, Van Goth and a few others.

After the museum, we went back to the hostel and capped off the night with an indifferent meal at an old school, white table cloth restaurant nearby.