Oldies On Tour

Up at the crack of dawn, breakfast finished and outside hailing a cab all by 0745; and I thought we were supposed to be on holiday!!!!!

We arrived at the docks with the mandatory 1-hour to spare even though the traffic around the port was at a standstill. I think the hold up was simply too many HGV’s, Taxis and other traffic all converging on this one entrance to the port, but all this gridlock didn’t prevent our driver, and countless others, just sitting on their horns.

The journey across the “river” plate took about 1¾ hour’s in this “fast-cat” ferry, and very smooth trip it was. Waiting for us when we alighted in Uruguay was our walking tour guide; yes I did say, “walking”, and off we set

Colonia is a UNESCO world Heritage Site in southwest Uruguay, facing Buenos Aires across the Río de la Plata and is known for its cobbled historic quarter and colonial Portuguese and Spanish buildings. We found it strange as you could easily

identify the influences in the Spanish and Portuguese design of the buildings and road surfaces, and there is one very simple answer.   Between 1680 and 1822, the place changed colonial masters 10 times between Spain and Portugal until in 1828 when Uruguay was created.

Many of the old houses are now museums, small touristy shops and restaurants and bars. There is also the Colonia del

Sacramento Lighthouse, built out of the ruins of 17th century “Convent of San Francisco” and is a suitable place to go up to get panoramic views. Across the River Plate; not that we went up though!!!

Having walked around and listened to our guide who, though did commentary in both English and Spanish, her PA system was a little lacking and only if one was lucky, could you pickup every 3^rd or 4^th word.   Needless to say the tour whistled along very quickly.   When we were booking

this tour, Christine read a report by someone who said, “ the pity was we left on the afternoon ferry, we should have left on the 2045hrs ferry as we hadn’t completed

Not a happy bunny!

everything”; knowing this, we booked the 2045hrs return trip.

Our tour also included lunch, which we took at around 1230hrs as by now we had seen all there was to see. We even stretched out lunch with a bottle of wine but it was all over by 1445hrs and at this point I am afraid I had had enough though, Christine did think it was a pretty little place, though not pretty enough to stay ‘till 2045.

We walked back to the ferry terminal to see if we could change our tickets and get the 1620hrs ferry. No we were told as we had, though didn’t know it, a promotional ticket; it was 2045hrs only. The prospect of waiting another 5 hours was too much so we tore up our ticket and bought another 1-way ticket on the 1620hrs ferry; probably the best thing we did otherwise neither of us could be held responsible for what actions we may have taken!!!!!

We arrived back in BA, jumped into a cab and “b….y h..l”, when the driver put his foot on the accelerator, the noise, “s..t”, the taxi had no silencer, and behind the rear seats, where there is normally a luggage area with padding and other noise dampening upholstery, there was nothing, just a gaping hole. I would add that this was a proper; licensed; official; Buenos Aries radio taxi, anyway he got us tour hotel and we were very happy we had come away early. When we booked it was also suggested we may like to stop the night over there, thank god we didn’t fall for that!!!!

Tuesday was going to be local; we had another load of washing for the laundrette, Christine has a hair appointment and we now have, “I hope”, everything we need to submit our medical claim and after all that we will visit “Café Tortoni.

Washing delivered first thing, Christine later emerged out of the hairdresser’s as a skinhead, and armed with a piece of paper in Spanish, saying “Registered Mail”, we went in search

of a main post office, which we found very easily and between our piece of paper, our very limited Spanish and the Post Office chap’s non existent English, we think we have sent our envelope with our claim winging towards the UK, fingers crossed.

Now we’re off to Café Tortoni, originally opened in 1858, but moved to the current location in 1880. The Tortoni Café, is

located at in the “Avenida de Mayo” and Its name “almost” without doubts, comes from the XIX century famous Café Tortoni of Paris.  For almost a century, the Buenos Aires Tortoni Café represents the traditional spirit of this part of town, and is already a legend of the city of Buenos Aires. In this coffee house all the poets, artists’ thinkers and other “significant” characters whiled away their time socialising 100 years ago.  Nowadays it is still a place of cultural and probably more importantly a major tourist “must visit” place.

En route to the Café Tortoni, we were held up by a demonstration. The march was all about un-employment, whole

families taking part in this peaceful but noisy demo. Apparently the un-employment figure here is around 25% out of a population of the Buenos Aries region alone of more than 17 million people, and much of this is apparent as one walks the streets, people sleeping rough.Back to the coffee house; walking in, there is that air of turn of the last century ambience; dark wood panelled walls, waiters in black suits with bow ties, a serving counter and ‘till from the days of Adam and pictures and posters of famous visitors over the years. It was fairly busy but the service wasn’t great, though the cakes were nice and the coffee/tea was hot.   We are glad we went but probably won’t go back again. Out the back there is a small stage where on certain nights they perform a Tango show, we enquired but they only accept cash and cash is getting to be a little tiresome due to:-

• The limitation of how much one can get from an ATM, maximum 2,000 pesos (around £80) and
• They make a charge of 198 pesos (around £7) every time one uses the ATM, and
• You can’t seem to find one when you need one;

Needless to say we didn’t book.

We walked back along the pedestrianised “Florida” street where many of the world’s brands can be found.

In passing, I must say public transport is plentiful; every time you blink, there is another “Colectivos”, a

Buenos Aries Bus and they are all painted in different colours, presumably to denote what route they travel.

Upon arriving back to the hotel Christine casually enquired about Tango shows and where would you, “Mr Receptionist” go or recommend; he came straight back with “Madero Tango” They will collect and return to hotel and they take credit cards, the food is excellent and the show is magnificent. O.K, we booked for tomorrow night, another tick in the box.

Today was going to be Hop-on Hop-off bus day but all this healthy stuff is getting to me, when I woke up I felt like s—t; I was running a temperature, coughing like mad and couldn’t stop blowing my nose; thanks Christine and a little sympathy would have been appreciated!!!!

Determined to put a brave face on it we went out searching for more healthy meals and a chemist. We accomplished both and returned to the hotel to drop our shopping off and catch up with any e-mail’s there may be, and to our delight there was one from our house buyers, confirming that they are now in a position to complete within the couple of weeks or so. Though this didn’t stop me from feeling like s—t, it gave us the excuse to go out to lunch and down a bottle of Malbec before returning to the hotel for a quiet evening and an early night. Oh yes, where we enjoyed our lunch, when we went to pay we were told they didn’t accept credit cards, and to make things worse, we didn’t have sufficient cash. We gave them “everything” we could muster and said we would make the shortfall good the next day if that was OK, and they agreed!!

One other achievement today, we booked a day trip on the Fast-Cat to visit Colonia in Uruguay. We will have to be up early on Monday, as we have to be in the port 1 hour before departure for immigration formalities etc.

The pills the chemist gave us, must have had the desired effect as I awoke this morning raring to go, so back to the Hop-on Hop-off plan, but firstly an ATM was needed. After visiting a couple of ATM’s behind locked doors, we eventually found one.

OK, cash in pocket we went to the bus stop and there it was, just coming round the corner. There are actually 3 routes but

at present two are amalgamated into one. We started out at 10.20 and apart from an hour out for lunch when we settled our debt, completed both routes by 1700hrs; it was a long and very hot day. Our intention was to case everywhere out then decide where we wanted to get off to visit the following day.

The city is quite magnificent, many open green spaces, very

wide roads, in fact we counted 12 lanes running in one direction in one place.

Travelling around this way one gets to hear about their history. It all started when explorer “Juan Diaz de

Soils” was navigating this region in the name of Spain, and he was the first European to reach the Rio de la Plata in 1516. His expedition was cut short though when he was killed during an attack by the native Indian tribe in what is now Uruguay.  In 1536 a settlement was founded by a Spanish expedition led by Pedro de Mendoza and he named the place, “Ciudad de Nuestra Senora Santa Maria del Buen Ayre”; Buenos Aries today, but in 1542 those pesky Indians, after causing havoc, finally drove all the settlers away from the area. A second, and permanent settlement was established in 1580 by a Conquistador; “Juan de Garay” who obviously wasn’t taking any truck from the local Indians!

There is a lot of history to this place including the period

when the British invaded; the first attempt didn’t do the job but the second, in 1806 was successful, though not for long. An army from Montevideo kicked the Brits out again 46 days later. In 1807 The Brits managed to occupy Montevideo for several months and again they tried to occupy Buenos Aries, but after much street fighting and heavy casualties, the Brits withdrew; oh dear!!! To add injury to insult the Argentines are displaying as a war trophy, the colours they captured from the 71^st Highland regiment of foot, at the Santo Domingo Convent, the place where they made their last stand. The remains of the soldiers are in a mass grave somewhere in the Belgrano area of the city.

I mentioned in an earlier piece that this Aparthotel, the Loi Suites, is a little past its sell-by date, I think the room key technology proves the point; but joking apart, it couldn’t have been in a more convenient and central place for us to be whilst visiting Buenos Aries.

Today, (Sunday) is the second travel day on the Hop-on Hop-off bus but instead of going to the local stop we decided to walk to the Gallerias Pacifico, a shopping mall but not your usual

shopping mall, oh no, this was a building originally designed specially, and built in 1889 for “Bon Marche” of Paris but it never happened. Instead in 1896 the building became the “Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes” Museum of fine arts ‘till 1908. In May 1992 this building re-generated itself and became the Gallerias Pacifico, and we were walking towards it.

Being Sunday, naturally no shops were open other than a couple of coffee shops but the building is open so people can admire the interior iron work and the Frescos painted on the ceiling;

it’s quite a building, I would say far too good for a shopping mall!!!   Interestingly, on the opposite side of the street is the old “Harrods” building, this was the only store outside London carrying the Harrods Brand. The store was opened in 1914 and strangely, I remember visiting Father Christmas there as a child and the reason I remember was My mother asked me what was I going to ask F.C. for, and I wanted a wheel barrow; well one does around 5 yrs., old but I had to know what wheel barrow was in Spanish before I could ask him. Apparently mbnail wp-image-6107″ /> Harrods Old buildings[/caption]I sat around all day thinking what the word was and aeventually I remembered it, so off we went. I will never forget “carretilla”, the word for wheelbarrow. I digress; the store finally closed its doors in 1998 after a major court case with Al-Fayed.

Back on track and we headed up to the bus stop in the main “drag” Avendia 9^th Julio, named to commemorate their Independence Day.

Our bus arrived quickly and up we went to sit on top and to our

delight, this one had a sliding top so we weren’t in the sun, though this was short lived. We arrived at stop “0” and the driver was due for his 20-minute break but we were all told to get on the bus in front, which was about to leave; good and bad; good no waiting, bad, no top and we had to endure the hot sun beating down on us. We managed to stay on top until we reached the “La Boca” area where we got off. Though we had been here back in 2014, we had been rushed on that occasion so this time we had time to meander around and have a couple of wines etc., and watch an “interesting” Tango Dance performed outside the bar.

La Boca is an area adjacent to the old docks and became famous

for the creation of the “Argentinian Tango”.   It is also the area where many Italian immigrants landed late 19^th and the early part of the 20^th century, and here they stayed and lived.   There is also a famous football team here but we don’t talk about football, wrong shape ball!!!

Back on the bus and again no top, just sun beating down on us as we headed for our next stop, Palermo Soho. Passing along the

way we clocked one of the many statutes of “Juan Manual Fangio”, The Argentinian Grand Prix Driver who won 5 world titles (1951, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957). We managed to stay upstairs until we arrived at the swing bridge, which naturally was open, so we had to just sit there until it closed. Without the wind being created by movement we had to dive downstairs into the air-conditioned interior, along with most other passengers; it was very crowded down there!!!

It was now getting quite late and we were hungry so once we left the bus we went in search of Argentine Steaks, yes they are good for the diet we are told, as long as there are no chips!!!

Palermo is the largest area by size in Buenos Aries and it is described as the young peoples area within the city, the coolest area in the city and that people flock to this area like “moths to a flame”; our sort of place! The area was buzzing, there were many small Sunday stalls selling trinkets and other object d’art, bars were overflowing and we found the Irish bar but sadly, we hadn’t time to visit it, steaks are what we wanted and steaks is what we were going to have.

With minimal trouble we found this excellent restaurant,

Started of outside then we went in

“Cabernet”, and we had a very nice waiter who said he was from Venezuela, though to us he sounded more American but after closer examination he admitted he had lived in Florida for

Geoff having had his steak and drunk the wine, happy bunny, too many salads!

several years. Anyway the steaks were cooked to perfection, just enough blood and we washed them down with an excellent bottle of Malbec, Grand Reserva. We shared a combination platter of deserts and before you say anything, we are still celebrating the news that our house sale is finally

Inside this lovely restaurant

drawing to a conclusion.

We waddled out of the restaurant and started to worry that we may have missed our last bus, still we headed for the stop ever hopeful a bus would arrive, and it did. Our problem was we were half a block short of the stop so I walked in front of the bus a little to hold it back until we got to the point that we could manage a short sprint to the stop. Yes we caught the bus and were told by the conductor it was the last bus of the day, wow, didn’t we do well!!! Unfortunately this was a green route bus and we needed a red/blue route bus but as they were driving back to their depot, and as it so happened it passed the Theatre Colon, they would drop us off; a double wow, and if that wasn’t enough, we persuaded the driver to drop us off at the traffic lights ½ a block before the official stop; a triple wow; we were very proud of ourselves.

We went back to the hotel for a few games of crib and bed, for tomorrow we have to be up early as we are off to Uruguay.

 

 

Leonardo was waiting for us at the appointed hour and we were on our way to the airport but not the one in Brazil, the one in Argentina so had to go through the border formalities yet again.

This was a small domestic airport in a jungle clearing, not too busy but on the ball enough to charge us for overweight suitcases.   The local allowance is 15 Kg, we were into the early 20’s but the guy must have felt a little sorry for us as he agreed to put another case through with no extra charge!!!

After a faultless flight we touched down in Buenos Aries, waited an age for our cases to come through and then find our driver. After much searching no one to be found, and to add to the problem we couldn’t get through on the number we were given. Anyway some kind soul took pity on us and ‘phoned their contact and eventually we got the message that our driver had been given the wrong time, wrong flight, and the wrong airline, so we jumped into a cab.

When we booked this trip we wanted to use the time in BA to try and thin down before the Cunard cruise so asked Harry to try and get us an apartment but the nearest thing he could get was an Aparthotel. This will do the job, especially as it is right in the middle of Buenos Aries though the building is a little passed its sell-by date. We also got a very apologetic call from the lady who was due to pick us up at the airport and agreed to meet the us following day and re-fund our taxi fare; which I am pleased to say she did.

This Aparthotel is part of a group and about 30 minutes away is

their sister, 5* hotel and we can use their pool; which we did on our first full day.

As I have already mentioned, our main objective is to do some healthy living and exercise. Healthy eating started with a visit to the supermarket to buy our dinner for the evening, a pre made salad and fresh fruit to finish; alcohol seems to be out of the question for the time being.  We also needed a laundrette, which is over the road and Christine needed a hairdresser and again this is over the road; all our needs catered for.

Our task now is to find the Hop-on, Hop-off bus so set off this

morning to the main line railway station, “Retiro” as we were told by reception this is where we would get all the information we needed. Ha, after a ½ hour walk in the heat we arrived at the station and there was nothing. No tourist information, no signs about the bus service, no sign of the buses, nothing. So after a cup of coffee we plotted a route to the Opera House, “Teatro Colón”. This theatre was opened in 1908 though the building work started in 1888 and apparently it has the “best acoustics for opera” in the world.

We arrived and booked “the tour” and what a

magnificent interior it is. We could imagine the gentlefolk in the early 20^th century swanning up the grand staircase in their long dresses, showing off their latest fashions from Paris etc. The entrance and grand staircase was built just for that. Upstairs in the “gold room” these same folk mingled during the interval. It’s called the gold room as the upper parts of the columns and ceiling are covered in “gold leaf” It was a good tour and well worth the visit.

As we were leaving the Theatre we noticed the yellow, Hop-on Hop-off bus pass the side entrance so out I shot, but to no avail, it disappeared into the distance. We knew the direction it came from so walked back to the lights and waited 20 minutes ‘till the next one came along and maybe we would get a better idea. We eventually spotted this yellow beast in the distance and noted where it had stopped. That’s it, we walked to where this was and low and behold it was the bus stop for this city tour bus. Whilst waiting we got talking to another couple who kindly gave us their map of the routes. Now we knew the routes, where to catch the bus and the times they run, mission accomplished, so back to the hotel for another healthy option meal, salad and fruit and no alcohol!!!!  In line with this healthy regime we walked over 12,000 steps, 7.9-Km’s and we were knackered, again!!!!