Buenos Aires and Mendoza

In Buenos Aires a great hotel was waiting for us, the 562 Nogaro, next to the Plaza de Mayo. We decided to book this hotel because Laura's birthday was coming up. Buenos Aires looked like a European city, something in between Paris and Madrid.

The first day we visited the center: Plaza de Mayo, Metropolitan Cathedral, and The Pink House, which at night is illuminated with pink lights. After that we walked through the pedestrian street, calle Florida, which is full of stores and people. We arrived to the obelisk and finally to the Colon theatre.

We did a tour through the theatre, which was recently restored. The guide claimed that it is one the best for both orchestra and opera because of it's great acoustics. Even Pavarotti once said that it had a huge defect: acoustics are perfect, meaning that everybody would notice any mistake he made.

We ate at galerias pacifico and there we bought tickets for a tango show for the same night and it was a great decision because we avoided the touristic shows in restaurants. The show, pasion de Tango, was in centro cultural Borges. It had live music and the dancers were spectacular!

Before the show we walked through Puerto Madero, docklands running in front of the river with remodelated warehouses turned into restaurants and lofts.

The second day we visited the Recoleta neighborhood and its cementery. At the entrance they gave us a map to walk around. It looked like a city because it has streets. But instead of houses you find graves. We visited, among others, Eva Peron's tomb. We walked around for a while until we had enough of spiderwebs, creepy angels and dusty coffins.

When we got outside we saw the typical "pasea perros", professional dog-walkers who walk between 10 and 15 dogs at the same time!

After the cemetery we passed by the National Library and the Fine Arts Museum.

That afternoon, when we came back to our hotel we found a huge demonstration in front of it.

That night we had dinner with our Chilean friends, Coti and Manuel, who were staying in BA for work.

The third day we went to get lunch in a restaurant called "la moreneta de Montserrat" which is owned by an Italian and Argentinian couple who were working in Mallorca before going to BA. In fact, they had an article with the title "estrella fugaz" from "la vanguardia" posted on the front window, explaining that the restaurant in Mallorca closed and earned a Michelin star right before.

That afternoon we visited the Boca neighborhood that was started by Italian immigrants. There it lies the "caminito", a street with bright colored houses and restaurants with tango shows. To get there we took a public bus and we spent a lot time looking for coins to pay the fare. Argentina has a shortage of coins and they are very difficult to get!

The fourth day was Laura's birthday! We talked to our families and went back to la Moreneta. Victor arranged the dessert with a candle, so that Laura could blow it.

That night we took a 15h bus to Mendoza. We were worried it was tiring, but we slept better than in some hostels we stayed in. The bus had 180 degrees reclinable seats and the food was awesome.

After the trip, we went to the hostel To get a shower and the only things we had time to visit were two wineries and an olive oil factory.

The next day we took one more bus to cross the Andes and get to our NEXT STOP: Santiago de Chile.