BUENAS NOCHES BUENOS AIRES

Yikes.  It’s been more than a month since we returned and I’ve been a master of procrastination.  I need to finish off B.A. and get to other things.  As I type this, I’m in the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero in San Francisco, eating way too much free food.  But, I’m ahead of myself.

I left off with me flopped on the B&B patio yesterday afternoon waiting for dinner.  I got refreshed, but there was still plenty of time to kill before venturing out at the “proper” dinner hour.  Your erstwhile scrivener, of course, applied himself to the Blog.  What lies to tell this time?

 

At nine o’clock we figured we wouldn’t get too many stares if we entered a restaurant, so we set off.  I had my heart set on trying the famed Argentine grass-fed beef, since steaks are a sort of national religion here.  Kevin told us about a favorite spot of his, saying it was “four blocks up and two blocks over.”  Okie-dokie.  We set off, faithfully counting the blocks.  Hmm.  Did the rest of our block count as the first, or was that not included?  We turned left after four blocks and walked two blocks into a rather sketchy area.  Kevin had said the place had a big neon sign that we couldn’t miss.  Well . . . We spotted no sign, gave it an extra block, then started going up one more, then back two more, then circling again.  You get the picture.  Fruitless.  We didn’t see anything else that looked attractive either.  It was pretty dark, and no streetlights, so dodging the, um, doggie gifts was getting hazardous.  Back to Avenue Rivadera, where it was at least lit.  We decided to head back to the place near us where we had had pasta.  Although they seemed to specialize in seafood, I knew they had steaks on the menu, as does virtually every place here.  After all our walking, we were at least fashionably timely in our entrance, so no raised eyebrows at 9:40 pm.  A bottle of decent wine soothed the soul, and we settled in, pantomimed our orders, and relaxed our last night in South America.

Now, that steak looks nicely charred, and it was.  But it was a great disappointment when I cut into it.  Pretty much overdone through and through.  I’m pretty sure I got the local term for medium-rare into the order, but who knows?  Anyway, we didn’t want to wait any later for a re-do, so I soldiered on.  It had some decent flavors, but it certainly was not juicy.  Too bad.  We killed the bottle to dull the pain.  The great Argentine beef will have to remain a tantalizing myth.

Wednesday morning dawned sunny, with no chance of rain, so another good walking day.  We didn’t have to leave for the airport until late afternoon, as our flight home was at 9:30 p.m.  Kevin set up another great breakfast and we lingered and enjoyed it.  Since he didn’t have anyone coming in today, he generously allowed us to keep the room until we had to leave, so we could shower and pack after we got done walking about.  Very nice.

Since we wanted to keep ourselves relatively fresh for the long flight home, we decided to try our hands at the Subte, B.A.’s subway system.  It isn’t as extensive as the Metro in Paris, or even the N.Y.C. subway, but it does cover a lot of ground.  There was a stop just a block away on our street, on the line that runs straight to the central part of old downtown, ending at the Rose Palace.  It was quite simple to buy our tickets, as there are human vendors at every station, and all you have to do is say how many you want.  Even I can count to 2 in Spanish.  The subway cars look reasonably modern from the outside, but once you get inside, at least on this line, it’s a time warp to the past.  Wooden cars!

Yup, those are regular sash windows, and, yes, they do leave many of them down as you are hurtling through the tunnels.  It gets a bit breezy, to say the least, and the sounds the train makes as it screams through the turns bring only one thing to mind:  derailment.  But, it’s a kick!  We made it safely downtown to Plaza Mayo, which was the end of the line for this route.

Our destination today was to explore the redeveloped area along the harbor, where they have rehabbed old warehouses into tony apartments and shops on one side of the canal, and erected highrises for the swells.  Located on the “good” side of the tracks, it is called

The red buildings in the foreground are the back sides of some of the remodeled warehouses, and a few highrises peek above them.  The view from the other side is decidedly nicer.  That’s the Puente de la Mujer in the foreground, a 335 foot suspension bridge (you can faintly make out the slanted cables) built in Spain and transported in sections to be erected here in 2001.  It was designed by Santiago Calatrava, who is said to have requested examples of Argentina's typical music upon receiving this commission. As a result, the bridge is abstractly meant to illustrate a couple dancing Tango, the man towering over the woman who is leaning back horizontally.  Okayyy.  Anyway, it has three sections, and the center one supposedly swivels to allow boats to pass.  We didn’t see that happen, but you can see the cracks marking the sections at the right just before the pillar, and the same on the other side.

The only thing we saw moving on the canal was this lonely guy in a single scull.  The water here is generally brown, due to the great volume of silt that comes down the river.

I wanted to see the Presidente Sarmiento, Argentina’s historic military frigate.  Built as a training ship in the 1890’s, it made six circumnavigations and several decades of training cruises until being retired from sailing status in 1938.  It served as a stationary training site until 1961, and has been a museum since.

We explored the upper deck, manned the helm, and made sure the guns were properly pointed at the elite housing.

Below decks, we noted the significant difference between the officers’ quarters and the space allotted to the enlisted crew.  Get that commission, boys!  The forward space featured a gravity torpedo launcher.  The torpedo was loaded through the opening (which, since, has been made smaller) in front of it, onto a trough that slanted down, forward, and out the bow.  The torpedo fell into the water and hopefully motored away from the ship towards its target.

No tour of the Sarmiento is complete, of course, without paying homage to the ship’s dog.  Sure, Susy, don’t you worry.  He’s just taking a nap.

Finished with the Sarmiento, we walked over the bridge,

and up the canal, taking in the posh housing and nautical playtoys of B.A.’s elite, and the corporate office towers looming beyond.  This really is a nice area, very quiet, and seems worlds apart from the earthier surroundings.  We saw no dog poop in Puerto Madero.

Done strolling, we grabbed a bite at a sandwich shop, and reboarded the Subte for the trip back to our Rivadera stop.

We got ourselves packed, cleaned up, and said our thank-you’s and good-byes to Kevin.  He called us a cab, ‘cause hailing one on the street is an iffy proposition cost-wise.  The gypsies can be bandits.  Our driver was a pleasant guy who spoke no English, but Kevin came down curbside and told him where we were going.  The international airport is way out of town, sort of like Dulles is to Washington, D.C., and it took a good 30-40 minutes to get there.  Once there, neither he nor we had a clue as to which of the various terminals we should go to.  A couple of stops, a cell phone call, and asking a cop finally got us to the – surprise! – international terminal.  We tipped senor clueless generously (what am I going to do with Argentine pesos?), and went in for the first of several long lines and lots of waiting.

The return flight was a repeat of the inbound one, probably on the same crummy plane, enlivened by our missing our connecting flight in Atlanta due to 90 minutes not being long enough to transit customs, immigration, TSA, baggage claim and recheck, and literally running our asses to the (very) distant gate.  It was gone five minutes by the time we got there.  I fault Delta for booking us on this connection, as it is patently undoable.  The gate person was a champ, and he admitted this was a known problem while rebooking us on a flight an hour later.  He said they’d been trying to get TSA/immigration to have a special line for short connectors, but they wouldn’t do it.  SO WHY DOES DELTA CONTINUE TO BOOK THIS CONNECTION?  Anyway, the next flight was just fine, and our bags actually had arrived on the flight we missed.  Miraculously, Delta held them for us instead of letting the carrousel bandits have at them.  Another end-of-the-line shuttle van ride home, and our journey was over.  I have to say, other than the flights, we can wholeheartedly recommend the cruise.  It was a lot of fun.  If I were planning it over, I would add on a trip to Iguazu Falls, on the Argentine/Brazil border.  Lots of other folks on the cruise did this, and I wish we had as well, as we most likely won’t get down that way again.

Next up:  the bad scoot breaks (?) Loni’s hand?  I, of course, am innocent.

BUENOS AIRES, FROM SACRED TO PROFANE

Ah, yes.  The brat.  OK, we’ve raised two sons, so we understand the terrible twos and not-much-better threes.  But this kid was in a whole new league.  Screaming.  Shrieking.  “No”ing.  Crying endlessly.  Did I mention that our patio area is an interior courtyard?  As in, all of the apartments have one side that faces into it?  Hot days and nights;  doors and windows open;  sound does its thing.  Oye, I wanted to collapse into bed around 10:00.  Well, I was in bed, but not sleeping.  I think it was midnight before the last wail trailed off.  Only to start again at 5 a.m.  Auuuuuggghhhhh.  I had turned the air conditioner on to try to mask the noise, but it didn’t completely do the trick.

[Postscript:  Our host said the kid had an earache, and was in pain.  Thankfully, they got it under control, and we didn’t have a repeat the next two nights.  Blissful quiet for the cranky traveler.]

Kevin is a breakfast host par excellence.  The spread he put out made up for the lack of sleep.  The pastries were still warm from his morning run to the bakery.  Fresh-squeezed juice, delicious coffee, fruits, yoghurts, cereals.  We were doin’ fine.

 

Oh, the Christmas tree.  Kevin had been vowing to himself to take it down for many weeks, but there it stood at the end of February.  I guess he meant it this time, as it was gone when we returned that evening.  He recommended that we take in the exhibit at the MALBA—the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, so we plotted out a walking route for the day.  We also had wanted to track down Eva Peron’s burial place and see some parks, so we had our legwork cut out.  Like any city, BA’s neighborhoods range from dismal to upper crust, but a typical middle class one looks pretty much like this.

  

This one is a lot cleaner than most, but not nearly as fancy as the posh ones over in the “Chico” area by the museum.  Note the trash bags piled around the tree.  No one uses trash cans, it seems.  What isn’t simply dropped on the sidewalk is placed in plastic bags and dumped on the pavement.  The trash trucks, when they come, have two or more guys hanging off the back who jump off and sling the bags into the hopper.  Trust me.  This isn’t a perfect operation.  A lot gets left behind.   Unless it’s very new, an apartment building doesn’t have central air or heat, so a common sight of the more upscale older buildings are dozens of air conditioners festering the facades.

 

Our first destination was the Cimenterio de la Recoleta, home in death to BA’s rich, famous, or having the right name.  Generations of the elite repose in ostentatious mausoleums.  They have a saying:  “It’s cheaper to live extravagantly all your life than to be buried in Recoleta.”  I can believe it.  Like all public spaces here, the trick is finding the entrance through the wall that surrounds the place.  We circumnavigated at least half of it before we found the white portals.  Once in, it’s like a mini BA, with some broad “boulevards” (like this one) with tinier streets radiating off.

The directions for finding Eva’s tomb were not particularly accurate, so we kept wandering around until we saw a crowd down one aisle.  That was the spot, but it was a lot less imposing than I had anticipated.  It’s actually her family’s (the Duartes) crypt.  The modest façade is the upper right photo with the red flowers.  The plaque with her name is the one at the upper right of the door.  I thought the most impressive tomb in the place was the stainless steel vault holding Arturo Gomez.  Fort Knox should be so secure.

Next to the cemetery is the rather simple (as far as cathedrals go) colonial Basilica de Nuestra Senora del Pilar, built by the Recoleto friars in 1732 and famous for its six German Baroque-style alters.  One of those had this unusual seated Christ figure holding his head in one hand while dripping blood.

So much for the sacred.  From here we started meandering towards the museum, passing by the Plaza Naciones Unidas, the centerpiece of which is this rather stunning huge sculptural piece, the Floralis Generica, designed and funded by its architect, Edwardo Catalano and finished in 2002.  The huge (60+ foot) aluminum and steel petals used to open at dawn and close at dusk, until the gears broke.  Now it just sits there, but impressive nonetheless.

Fronting this park is the Avenue del Libertador, which segues into Avenue Presidente Figueroa Alcorta, which is lined with upscale residential buildings.  It really feels a world apart from the more gritty parts of town.  The MALBA sits across the street from the swanks.

The major exhibit at this time was a wowser.  It featured the works of Carlos Cruz-Diez.  Unfortunately, they did not permit photography in the exhibit area, so I had to be content with the few (and definitely not the best) items that they had hung in the main entry hall.  C-D’s works are hard to describe, but easy to appreciate when you see them.  They consist of parallel lines, painted in such a way that the aspect changes as you move across the face of the work.  Sort of like a hologram that you tilt, but this is done solely with paint and shading.  Some of the works were truly remarkable and I had a lot of “how did he do that” moments.

Another part of the exhibition were the light rooms.  You had to don booties to enter them, but at least I was permitted to take photos.  Not quite sure if this is “art,” but it was way cool.

Click on the Cruz-Diez link above for his website and more photos.

Most of the parks we saw were simply grassy/tree-ey areas, which were a nice relief from the hubbub of the city.  And it is a noisy city.  Tons of traffic and lots of horn-honking.  Our walk back to the B&B took us past the pay-to-enter Jardin Japones which, from outside the fence looking in, wasn’t a must-see.  We continued past it and through the wide-open Parque de Febrero (left, below).  The walled and gated Jardin Botanico, however, was impossible to enter without going a lot further than we wanted to.

There aren’t a lot of round-abouts, but one of them sits on Avenue del Liberator at the Monumento a los Espanole (sorry, the collage cut the top off).  Liberator is a huge street, about nine lanes wide (I didn’t waste time counting them as we hustled along the crosswalk – I wouldn’t want to be caught in it when the light turned green with all those cars champing at the bit.  When there are street signs at the intersections, they look like these, complete with ads for Claro and Nokia.  Wonder if L.A. will seize on this opportunity to make a few bucks?

All that walking is hard on the feet.  These old bones needed a pick-me-up.  Ahhhhhh.

OK, to complete this post’s title loop [Warning: X-rated content approaching!], we couldn’t believe the name of this establishment.  In neon, no less!

It was in the 80’s the whole day, and that nice cool patio at the B&B, with no more wailing waif, was just the ticket to wait out the evening until it was late enough to eat dinner.

EL EDIFICIO DE LOS PAVOS REALES

is the name of our B&B in Buenos Aires. 

When you translate this step-by-step, it is shown as “The Building of the Real Turkeys.”  However, Pavos Reales together mean “Peacocks,” which is the correct meaning.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.  Sunday is the final day on board, or I should say the final hours, since we’re designated to hit the gangway at 8:15 a.m.  We packed our big suitcases last night, and the ship elves made off with them from outside our door sometime after midnight.  They were affixed with the tags the ship had printed out per our response to their inquiry (no last day tour, departing on our own at a later date), so we put our faith in the “system” and hoped to find them at the terminal.  We got up early enough to make one last assault on the breakfast bar, and ate enough to tide us over until dinner, let alone lunch.  Fetched our carry-on bags, a last look around the room, and we were off.  Buses took us from the ship on the 15 minute ride to the terminal, wending our way through the very active cargo port (even on a Sunday).  At the terminal, hundreds of bags were lined up in rows according to the color-coded and alphanumeric designations assigned by the ship.  In no time at all we walked directly to the right row and voila, or more appropriately, aqui es!  The customs and immigration work had all been done by the ship, so all we had to do was to pull and haul our gear out to the waiting clutches of the taxi coordinator, or, as I like to call him, El Fagin, leader of the merry band of taxi thieves.  He and they seemed to be the only show in town, and it appeared to be a well organized procedure to match passengers with appropriate drivers/vehicles.  For a price.  We had only 2-3 miles to go to our B&B.  I had printed out a map showing its location and its address.  For this we were charged, up front, $120.  No, not $US120.  In both Chile and Argentina, pesos are designated with the $ sign, so this was 120 pesos.  At about 4.3 Argentine pesos to the buck, that’s about $28.  That seemed high, but we didn’t see any freelance options.  Turns out it was pure banditry.  When we took a cab to the airport at the end of our stay, a trip of about 30 miles and several tolls, it was only 150 pesos.  So, welcome to Buenos Aires;  pickpockets come in all guises.

The guy at least drove safely and directly to our building, and we dumped our bags on the sidewalk in front of El Edificio de los Pavos Reales, named for the ornamental peacock carvings on the front.  Unfortunately, as you can see by the picture above, a large tree smack in front of the place obscures all of the artwork from the street.  Some of it is visible from the sidewalk but, frankly, making out the peacocks is an exercise in squinty sight and imagination.  The hand points to the best-defined one (head left, sweeping tail right).

Our access door was not the glass ones to the right of Loni, but rather the very heavy portcullis entry directly behind her.  Virtually all the residential doorways we saw sported similar formidable bars and gates.  Once inside (Kevin came down to let us in; afterwards we carried a set of skeleton keys for this entry and for the apartment door), you have a choice of a genuine original 1912 cage elevator or a spiral staircase.  Having lived part (6 months) of my early life (age 6) in the then-not-so-new Hotel Envoy in downtown Chicago, which ran a similar elevator that kept trapping me between floors, old phobias made this an easy choice.  Besides, climbing stairs is good for you.  The ancient keys were a gas, but I can’t see that they provide a lot of security.  What could be easier to duplicate?

When we showed up, it was only about 9:30 a.m.  We walked in on the four guests from the previous night, eating breakfast, two of whom were to embark our ship that afternoon to take the same cruise in reverse.  Kevin, the proprietor, had us stow our bags in the foyer, asked if we were hungry (uh, no, not after cleaning out the ship’s larder), then suggested we might want to get a start on strolling around until noon or so, when he’d have the room ready.  We took off, thinking a walk to a park might be nice.  This entailed walking further along the street fronting the B&B, Avenida Rivadavia, which turned out to be one of the focal streets of the city.  All of the streets that transect it change their names at Rivadavia, and it is ground zero for the numbering system as well.  We didn’t figure this out until the next day, when we kept getting confused about the street names.  The confusion is compounded by the fact that many of the principal intersections lack any streetname signage at all.

We immediately felt comfortable walking this neighborhood, called the “Once” (eleven) District.  There was a lot of foot traffic, including many families (it was a Sunday), and nobody paid us any attention.  We quickly confirmed a fact stressed in our Lonely Planet guidebook:  BA is perhaps the dog-crappiest city on the planet.  Unlike pristine (again, as we were told, since we didn’t get there) Santiago, nobody seems to clean up dog droppings in BA.  They are everywhere.  You MUST keep at least one eye down on the pavement in front of you as you walk, as it is a constant tango with the forces of feces.  Naturally, I wanted to photograph some of the more, ah, colorful displays, but Loni nixed that idea.  You’ll just have to imagine the worst.  We didn’t notice much of this yesterday in the City Center area, but out here in the regular residential neighborhoods it is a real problem.  There’s lots of other trash and junk on the sidewalks as well.  Folks just seem to ignore it, but it was an eyesore to us.  We walked about two miles and came to the Parque de Centenario, where we found a convenient bench and plopped down to observe the passers-by, 

and this exercise class that was really going to town.  We sat there for at least a half hour, and they never stopped, although the leaders changed.

Traveler tip: major parks have bathrooms, thank goodness.  We left to make our way back, and discovered another fact about life in BA:  pedestrians have no rights whatsoever.  Cars actually speed up coming towards you, honking their horns all the while.  If you have the “walk” sign you still don’t have the right of way if a car wants to turn through the crosswalk in front of you.  More than once we felt like matadors, waiting for the “ole’s” to ring out as we did veronicas with turning cars.  We made it safely back to our home-away-from-home for the next three nights.  We think we really made the right choice.  The interior retains all of its 1912 woodwork and features, like the 15 foot ceilings and the 12 foot curved doorways, crown moldings, and wood floors.  We felt we’d stepped back in time.

Loni’s sitting in the parlor under the stained-glass peacock; the front bedroom, which has a balcony area behind those railings, is over her shoulder;  our bedroom is the top right, and the courtyard outside our door.

At left, looking into the dining room through it’s curved dooway from the patio (entry to our room on the right);  the dining room (with some pictures waiting to be hung), and the foyer.

Another view of our room which, as you can see, was not very large, but it was quite comfortable.  We had the whole suite of rooms to use, so the tight bedroom quarters were just fine.  The bathroom, fortunately, was not 1912 vintage, and everything worked just fine, with plenty of hot water, although we didn’t try the jacuzzi. 

We got unpacked and settled in, and I checked emails for the first time in two weeks.  Nothing of note, which was good.  Amazing how you can forget all about the e-world when you don’t have it available, and not miss it a bit.  We just kicked back and enjoyed the quiet until dinner time.  Neither of us had slept well our last night on the ship, so it was good just to veg.

We weren’t particularly hungry, so a pizza sounded good, especially as it was only 5:00.  BA, like Spain, is a late-eating city.  People don’t show up in restaurants until about 9:30, and they don’t get filled until well after 10.  But, it is quite common to have a snack (usually a sweet one) in the late afternoon, so we wouldn’t be the only ones wherever we went.  Our morning wander showed us that the Italian influence is just as strong in BA as it is in LA, and we saw lots of pizzerias.  A nice looking one was just a block away, so we headed to Sanchez y Sanchez, home of the never-smiling waiter.  Most waiters in BA are unionized, with stable pay and benefits.  Tips are pretty much fixed at 10%, so there’s little incentive to turn on the charm, especially with gringos who can’t speak a lick of Spanish.  The menu we got did have English subtitles, so we at least knew what we were ordering.  We got a prosciutto, some sort of cheese, and a ton of arugula leaves.  I also thought I was ordering two beers, but he brought instead a mammoth bottle of Heineken and two glasses.  It was perfect.  Our first day on our own in Puerto Nuestra Senora Santa Maria del Buen Aire.  We toasted, finished our pizza, and dragged our tired bones back to the B&B and . . .

the screaming kid.  (. . . to be continued)

DON’T CRY FOR ME, ARGENTINA

We again pulled into port in the early pre-dawn, so we were docked in Buenos Aires by the time we got up.  Like Montevideo, the cruise ships tie up at the commercial piers shared with the freighters, so our view from the deck was of a distant BA skyline over the tanks, warehouses, and boxcars.

BA is huge and sprawls like Los Angeles.  13 million people are in the greater BA area.  In the latter half of the 19th century, soaring agricultural exports funneled a lot of money into BA, resulting in elaborate mansions, public buildings, and wide, Parisian-style boulevards.  We hadn’t set up any formal tours, so shank’s mare would be our method of getting around.  The ship docked Saturday morning, but we would get one more night on board before having to disembark early Sunday.  Our location out in the industrial dock boonies meant a rather long bus ride to the terminal where we could get started.  Once there, we were offered a free shuttle bus into the heart of town.  Can’t resist free, so we hopped on.  The gimmick was that it dropped us off right in front of the sponsoring high-end jewelry store, with friendly greeters to usher everyone inside.  We could resist that, and set out down Calle Florida, the main pedestrian-mall shopping street in the city center.  It was a mixture of modern store-fronts and classic buildings.  It also had hordes of tourist police, just like Montevideo.  I sensed one young guy maneuvering behind me, whirled around, and caught him with a guilty-as-hell look before he did an about-face and disappeared.

One of the openings along the Calle turned out to be the entrance into a high-end fancy shopping center, the Galleria Pacifico, that would have been right at home in Paris, including its prices.  We did a lot of window shopping, but no buying.  No bargains here.

Calle Florida runs about 12 blocks and ends near the main square in the city center, Plaza Mayo, ground zero for centuries of protests.  Originally named Fortress Plaza when laid out in 1580, it acquired its present name after the date Buenos Aires declared independence from Spain – May 25, 1810.

The entire east side of the Plaza is taken up by the Casa Rosada (Pink House), the presidential palace where Juan and Eva Peron used to hold their balcony showtimes for the assembled masses.  Madonna crooned from here in the movie, “Evita.”

You will note the tall iron fence surrounding the Palace.  This, of course, is not unlike the fence surrounding our White House.  What is peculiar to BA, however, is that similar fences, or high walls, surround almost all of the public parks and gathering places throughout the city.  You can’t just walk into a park;  you have to circumnavigate the thing to find the one entrance that is open.  That can take a lot of walking.  This is, I’m sure, a remnant of BA/Argentina’s tumultuous past where limiting/controlling access to potential demonstration sites was a government priority.  Anyway, the Palace was hosting an outdoor display of photographs taken over the years by the official presidential photographer.  U.S. – Argentina relations are rather rocky at times, perhaps explaining the choice of the photo of Dubbya, which I love.  This probably dates from his visit in 2005 during the Summit of the Americas.

The woman with the scepter and the man clapping are the Kirchners, Cristina and Nestor.  Nestor, a native of Patagonia, was elected president in 2003 as the antidote to a long series of dishonest BA politicians and disastrous economic policies (the country was dead broke in 2002, banks were open only 6 days all year, people hid what money they had under mattresses, and half the population was below the official poverty line), and he was largely up to the task.  He negotiated debt refinancing with the IMF, actually paid it off in 2006, addressed the human rights violations of the prior military dictatorship, and guided economic growth; but he also presided over rampant inflation, a belligerent foreign policy (cozied up with Hugo Chavez), and a growing rift between rich and poor.  He stepped aside in 2007, in favor of Cristina’s succession as president.  She has proved popular with the masses (Evita II?), not so much with running the ship of state.  “Official” inflation persists at 25%, probably higher in reality.  Nestor was supposed to step back in as president in 2011, but died of a heart attack in 2010, leaving Cristina to run again without his guidance.  She won!  Now she’s pandering to national pride by stirring up the Falkland Islands imbroglio (in Argentina, they’re always referred to as the Malvinas, and woe betides any foreigner who utters the “F” word). 

Also along the Plaza Mayo is the huge 1827 Cathedral Metropolitana,

which also houses the tomb of Argentina’s most revered hero of independence, General Jose de San Martin, protected by flanking honor guards.  We thought the mosaic tile floors were particularly handsome.

One of the diagonal streets that branches off from the Plaza Mayo is Roque Saenz Pena,

which offers a view of the Obelisco, dedicated in 1936 on the 400th anniversary of the first Spanish settlement on the Rio de la Plata.  It is supposed to symbolize BA much like the Eiffel Tower does Paris or the Washington Monument does D.C.  It sits in the middle of the biggest (widest) street in BA, Avenue 9 de Julio.  Soccer fans circle the Obelisco following particularly important national team victories, and it is ground zero for measuring E/W and N/S distances from the city center.  There are seven lanes in each direction on the Avenue.

By this time, we were walked out, and headed back to the ship to get a late lunch (already paid for, so . . .), ignoring the smells and displays emanating from the local parrillas (steak houses).

After lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon packing and tagging our bags.  We would have to put them outside our door before 11:00 pm.  They get picked up, sorted, and routed according to your tags.  Most all flights to the States leave at night from BA’s airport, and the ship kicks everyone off before 9:00 a.m., so it offers day-long tours (tango, lunch, gauchos) for those that are going home the same day.  They get the tour and are delivered, with their bags, to the airport at the end of the day.  It’s a good way to get there without hassle.  We, however, were staying on an additional three days in BA at a B&B, so our bags were delivered to the port terminal, where we would pick them up and fend for ourselves.  Since this was the last night on board ship, the kitchen went all out, offering lobster tails, surf & turf, etc.  They did a great job.  Afterwards, there was a final gathering in the theatre for a farewell to representative members of the crew, with well-deserved applause.

Based on our experience, we can wholeheartedly recommend the Celebrity Line, and won’t hesitate to book a future cruise with them if the itinerary is right.

Now, just where is that B&B located?