Buenos Aires City Tour & Tango Show

December 15

Today we had an all day tour with a local guide named Pablo. He was highly recommended on Cruise Critic and TripAdvisor. http://www.yourfriendinbsas.com.ar/ We had a nice breakfast at the hotel and Pablo was waiting for us downstairs when we arrived. Since the cemetery was right across the street, we started there. It’s the most interesting one we have ever visited. Such a display of wealth with the size and ornateness of the mausoleums. It was nice having a guide to explain the various areas and the stories behind the people buried there. Of course we had to see Evita’s family mausoleum. By comparison it wasn’t all that grand.

 entrance to cemetery

family crypt of Evita

 this humble one was built by the Masons

Pablo

 

We visited various neighborhoods (Plaza de Mayo (with Evita's balcony at Casa Rosada, seen from the square), San Telmo, National Congress, La Boca (Caminito and view of Boca Stadium, "La Bombonera"), Recoleta area, Cafe Tortoni, view of Teatro Colon, Puerto Madero (Woman Bridge included), and most was done by foot with a few taxi rides, a subway trip and a local bus thrown in to get us around efficiently. My favorite neighborhood was La Boca. Very colorful and tango dancers were performing. Pablo also showed us a couple of places we would not have found on our own such as the beautiful ceiling in a local mall and a Burger King that had beautiful artwork upstairs that is housed in a turn of the 20th century home.

 El Gran Gomero (Rubber Tree)

 me helping the statue hold up a branch

 protests over the new president that took office

 Casa Rosada - Presidential Palace

 famous balcony where Evita gave her speech

 Metropolitan Cathedral

 mosaic floor

 

In a small local mall:

 A surprise stop to see a Burger King housed in this beautiful setting:

 

 subway station

 art work in subway station

 National Congress Building

A torture center now under a freeway, Club Atletico, is undergoing excavation. Already, memorials have been placed at the site.

We stopped at a spot for lunch that looked to be in a “back alley”. El Obrero Restaurant was packed with locals and tourists alike. Pablo ordered for us a selection to share amongst the 3 of us. For the appetizer he ordered calamari and for a main a steak and home-made ravioli. The steak was just OK, but the ravioli was phenomenal. We were stuffed and skipped dessert. Since Panama has such bad tasting and tough beef and Argentina is known for their beef we were pretty disappointed with the steak. They seem to really like “lomo” (tenderloin) and it isn’t as flavorful as a ribeye. They may have had that as a choice, but he wanted to order for us and we let him. There is a lot of Italian influence in Buenos Aires. Their Spanish has an Italian accent and their pasta is as good as any in Italy.

 Pablo talking to a local outside of the restaurant

 inside El Obrero

 the owner and Pablo

 touring La Boca area

 futbol stadium

 Mercado de San Telmo

 Greg & Pablo

 Women's Bridge Puerto Madero

 book store used to be an opera house

 café in the bookstore

 Floralis Genérica is a sculpture made of steel and aluminum located in Plaza de las Naciones Unidas

 parrots flying by

 Gelato stop

entrance to our hotel

With Pablo we were able to get a very good overview of BA. Pablo booked a tango show for us this evening. He escorted us back to the hotel and said that Sr. Fabian would pick us up for the tango show later. We had time to kill so we went in search of a gelato place that was recommended and the dark chocolate orange was to die for. I had researched many of the numerous tango shows all with different styles. Reviews were all over the page on all of them, so I chose a traditional one.

Esquina Carlos Gardel is considered the Tango temple of Buenos Aires and is named after the most renowned Tango composer and singer, Carlos Gardel. It is located in Abasto; an area which is known as one of the principal Tango neighborhoods of Buenos Aires during the 1930's – Tango’s ‘Golden Age’ - and was also the neighborhood where Carlos Gardel himself grew up.

Esquina Carlos Gardel used to be a restaurant called "Chanta Cuarto" where Carlos and his friends would meet up to write tango lyrics and sing. Nowadays you can enjoy a wonderful Tango evening in this very same place. The top quality typical Argentine food (named after Tango songs) and the very professional tributes to the maestro Carlos Gardel, make for an authentic Tango night out in Buenos Aires. Esquina Carlos Gardel is characterized by its superb cuisine, an exquisitely decorated Art Nouveau style ambience that perfectly recreates the sophistication of the most luxurious traditional dining rooms and makes you feel like you’ve travelled back in time – to the luxurious 1930’s.

We were seated just off center very close to the stage and the food was pretty good. We had empanadas for appetizers, steak for main and then they served a sampler of several different desserts. I’m sure we could have found a better meal elsewhere, but it was pretty good and definitely convenient to eat there. They show a video while you are eating of the story of tango and how it evolved. Then we had a couple of hours of various tango styles, singers and orchestra performances.

 

The night ended just after midnight and we were returned back to our hotel with the tango show’s shuttles.

It was a late night, but we didn’t have a very early a start the next day for the Estancia .

We enjoyed the day with Pablo so much that we sent him an email to see if he had the day free for the last day of our trip on January 13 for the Tigre Delta Tour. He did so we booked it. We were going to do it on our own, but we figured after over 3 weeks in Antarctica we would be "done thinking" by then and he really did make it easy to see the sites as well as learn more about it at the same time.

If you are a glutton for punishment and wish to see more photos, I have added photo albums on Picasa. https://picasaweb.google.com/AKanies