Walk Until You Drop

The title of this blog is very much the theme of our stay in Buenos Aires, and will probably continue for the next couple of months! We have been here for almost a week and will head out for Uruguay very early tomorrow morning. We love to walk, and to see everything we wanted to see, we have exceeded 25,000 steps most days. Mark made me change that number down from 30,000, he says that I exaggerate. But I have little legs, and although his watch says 25,000 steps, mine is FAR more!! Regardless of how many stepss we have recorded, we have visited some beautiful locations and taken in some stunning architecture. Walking also allows us to pop into the local shops and see where and what the locals are eating.  I'll tell you about the food in another post, but first I want to show you some of the sites we have visited and share our impressions of Buenos Aires. 

Although we were warned not to wear too much flashy jewelry and to keep an eye on our wallets and cell phones, we have felt quite safe and secure here. The people are lovely, they hold doors, try to converse with us despite the language barrier, and children give up their seats on the bus for their elders. We have noticed many parks and green spaces, all of which have entertainment for the children, like climbing structures, water pads, and even merry-go-rounds.  It appears that everyone has a dog here, and we have seen many dog walkers and pet stores! It is summer here, and the children are out of school on holiday, so we have seen many families out and about. There are also quite a few tourists here, although we do not hear English spoken all that frequently. 

There are all sorts of fun things in the parklands, and the dogwalkers pictured above had 7 different dogs with them. Six were on leashes, and one just walked along with them free. 

We have spent time walking through many of the communities within Buenos Aires: Belgrano, Recoleta, Puerto Madero, Plaza De Mayo, San Nicolas, La Boca, San Telmo, and Palermo. Our little apartment is in Palermo, and our new friends Laura and Jim live in Recoleta. Laura gave us many suggestions of things to see and places to visit in the neighbourhoods we visited, and she took us on a tour of her neighbourhood. We walked to all of these locations except La Boca! Laura said it wasn't safe for us to walk to La Boca, so we took the #152 bus, which allowed us to see some other areas of Buenos Aires.

Belgrano

Racoleta with Laura: Floralis Generica (a moving flower sculpture), Evita sculpture and Palacio Errazuri Alvear.

The faculty of law, Racoleta cemetery, and El Ateneo Grand Splendid.

Puerto Madero and the Bosque Museo Fragata ARA Presidente Sarmiento

Plaza de Mayo: Casa Rosada, the house of the president and famous for Evita's balcony. (I am very impressed with Mark taking this photo in the top right 😜)

The Obelisk in Plaza De La Republica

Teatro Colon in San Nicolas

La Boca and the home of the La Boca Juniors soccer team, one of my favourite places!

The Grade 2 students created a La Boca village several years ago using cardboard. I think I will have to do that again now that I have actually been here! It is such a fun and colourful place to visit.

San Telmo market, one of the biggest markets we have been to outside of Thailand, with so many local artisans. If I didn't have to carry everything and make the weight restrictions for a million flights, I could have done some serious damage here!

The cobblestone streets, eco park and people enjoying yerba mate in Palermo

I think you would agree that walking until we dropped has allowed us to see some spectacular sites this week. I won't lie, we have blisters, our bodies ache, and we have literally dropped into bed most nights. Since we have to catch the Boquebus (ferry) very early tomorrow morning, we only walked 10,000 steps today. We have to get packed, and I wanted to try to update the blog and Google map. Stay tuned for a culinary installment soon!