Buenos Aires, Argentina

Thursday, March 6, 2014    Buenos Aires, Argentina What a gorgeous city! The Crown Princess arrived into port at 7:00am. After a quick shower and breakfast in our room, Larry and I were off to catch the red bus to the port terminal. It drove through the port which had thousands of big containers stacked ten high with dozens of big cranes rolling beside them to load on tractor trailer truck beds. Then we passed through the small shops of Ferrari, Polo, and Ralph Lauren to the front gate number 4...taking a free shuttle to downtown Plaza Libertador ( a green heavily treed park)where the fashionable Calle Florida Avenue of elegant shops and a very busy pedestrian street began . All along this walkway were exquisite buildings of European architecture. The city was very, very clean. Huge foot peddle operated dumpsters were available on all the streets that we encountered.

Buenos Aires is known as the "Paris of South America". It certainly lives up to its name. It is the second largest city in South America....11 million people live here. Buenos Aires means fair winds. The city is known for polo, horseracing, good steaks, good wine and the tango.

Argentina is divided into 23 provinces with a populations of 43 million people. Spanish is the primary language so Larry and I were able to communicate with the locals here.


Along the walk we could hear people shouting " Cambio" "Cambio" meaning money exchange. Larry and I had stopped in a local hotel and exchanged $50 US dollars for 500 pesos....a good deal. We were told on the ship that we would get 8 pesos for each dollar.... Anyway, a guide at the information booth warned us to be careful of getting counterfeit pesos.



We walked ten blocks to the heart of the city....the famous Plaza de Mayo (1590). Here a pink building of grand European architecture sat...Casa de Gobierno or House of Government and Casa Rosada or Pink House where the president works.  

Casa Rosa

                                                                Plaza de Mayo

Fountains fronted the political buildings and the Roman architecture of the Metropolitan Cathedral (1745) flanked the side street. 

                                              This does not look like a cathedral, but it is.

                                                                     Alter is real Gold!

In front of the House of Government was the Mayo Avenue completed in 1894 lined with sophisticated neoclassic and eclectic styles of architecture known as the largest street in the world....I believe it had 24 lanes across.



                                                             So European looking!


From here we walked down Av Roque Saenz Pena to Plaza de La Republica to the Obelis built in 35 days....this reminded us a smaller version of the Washington Monument. The Plaza was like New York's Time Square with all the bright light screens. We had a nice lunch here.

Big Screen Advertising Coke!

                                                                      The Obelis

 

During the afternoon we did some shopping, and answered emails. We had several fun conversations with local Argentinians and Larry grabbed a 7 pesos swirl cone at Micky D's on our walk back to toward the ship.

                                 Argentinians love American music...in the stores, restaurants, and buses!
We arrived back at the ship around 5:00pm. Because the Crown Princess would be going through drills for the new passengers who boarded todays 2nd part of our three part trip, we decided to have dinner in our cabin. We had a fantastic day in Buenos Aires and thought..." We would like to come back to this city for a week or two, there would be plenty to see and do!" The ship left the dock at 8:00pm for the next port, Montevideo, Uruguay.

                                                             Sun setting over Buenos Aires!