Buenos Aires day 3

We woke around 9 A.M. and headed out the door about 10:30. We took the local bus about 2 miles to the hop-on/hop-off bus tour stop and waited for the next sightseeing bus to come along. Across the street from the stop was the Polo ground, and the jockeys were out on the horses practising.

   

We only waited 10 minutes before the open-top bus arrived. We bought a 48-hour ticket and headed up the stairs to the open deck. The weather in the morning wasn't good at all. It rained for 15 minutes and looked like it was gonna rain most of the day. However, by the time we got on the sightseeing bus, it had cleared up, and the sun was breaking through with gusto!

The tour had a total of 20 stops all throughout Buenos Aires. We boarded at stop 13. Stop 14 was Chinatown, and I think we may get off there tomorrow or next week for a quick look around. The streets in Buenos Aires are ever so wide. It even boasts the widest street in the world with a total of 26 lanes of traffic!

Chinatown bus stop                  Pompeii cafe!                                          There's always someone building a wall!

   

After walking 8 miles yesterday, we decided to stay on the bus and just enjoy the sights and check out where we wanted to get on and off tomorrow or visit later. There's some fantastic architecture in the city, and a lot of it isn't visible until you're above street level. There are also some fantastic wall murals and interesting graffiti.

   

The bus took us all over the city, and we saw a lot of things we'd normally no chance of seeing if we had walked everywhere on foot. The city is so spread out--you could spend a month here and not see it all. We spotted a couple of places we’re going to go back to, and also past the beautiful old warehouse building that's now the hotel where Roger is staying.

There's even a huge marina and casino out towards the docks.

  

On our way to the Arena last night, we spotted a huge screaming face painted on the side of a wall. This just so happened to be right by our last (and first) stop on the sightseeing bus tour.

      

We also spotted a couple of Roger posters on our travels:

   

We stopped off for a small lunch around 4 P.M. then took a taxi back to our apartment to rest for a couple of hours. In the evening we headed out to a great little Mexican place in the Palermo-Soho neighbourhood that was running an International Women's Day special. We had tacos, chips, guacamole, and leisurely sipped on drinks before heading back. Of course, before we reached the apartment, we made sure to stop off and savour the two daily recommended and required scoops of Gelato! :)

Random cool cars we saw today

     

Full album of today's pictures below:

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Buenos Aires day 2

Had a lie in today after the long flight yesterday. We didn't leave the apartment until just before noon, then we wandered up through Palermo toward the Botanical gardens and parks. We passed the most amazing cupcake store and saw the largest one I've ever seen. It must have been over 12” high! We didn't go in, but I'm guessing we will before we leave! We stopped in a small cafe for lunch--a thin, grilled ham and cheese sandwich called sandwiches miga--then carried on walking down the tree-lined streets towards one of the main streets in Buenos Aires--Ave. Santa Fe. Everywhere you look there are cool buildings of all different shapes, sizes, and colours. You have no idea what to expect each time you turn the corner.

HUGE cup cake!                                       Cool building

 

We spent a little time wandering around the parks near the zoo and the planetarium (which was closed for refurb) then headed over to the Japanese garden.

       

Some of the streets here are really wide. It took us a few minutes to navigate our way across 13 lanes of traffic, all heading in one direction. The roundabouts are huge, too.

Huge roundabouts                           13 lanes of traffic                             Long crosswalks

   

We headed over to the Japanese garden and spent an hour looking around in there. Since she lived in Japan for 12 months and speaks Japanese, Kami was happy to see familiar sights

One of the public parks had a huge park bench. There was a group of tourists taking pictures, and when they left, I took a quick couple of pictures of Kami. A guy came up to me and asked if I wanted him to take a picture of the two of us. I didn't bother and said it was fine. After Kami got off the bench, he walked over to the bench, put his jacket down, laid on it, and proceeded to go to sleep! I guess the silly tourists were keeping him from his bed!

By this time, it was nearly 4 P.M., and we started to head back to the apartment still taking in all the architecture and cool sights along the way. I checked our walking route afterwards on Google maps, and we walked just over 8 miles. Our feet were feeling it by the time we got back to the apartment.

Pictures from day 2 below

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