Juan and Eva Perón exhorted the people in 1945 from the Casa Rosada balcony.
On July 23, we flew to Buenos Aires and checked into our apartment at 4426 Güemes. Carl had rented for us a spacious three-bedroom place on the sixth floor of a high rise. We especially appreciated the kitchen and two bathrooms. The first thing we noticed was that the weather was a lot colder than Brazil. Buenos Aires is 1600 miles to the southwest of Rio. All of us were glad that we had brought extra clothes. We needed them.
The famous obelisk on Avenida 9 de Julio celebrates Argentina’s independence from Spain.
As usual. we had an ambitious itinerary:
- Palermo (07.24)
- La Recoleta (07.25),
- El Centro (07.26),
- Puerto Madero (07.27),
- Villa Ocampo (07.28), and
- San Telmo and La Boca (07.29).
At Puerto Madero (the renovated dockside), Calatrava’s Bridge of the Mother honors Argentine women.
By week’s end, however, we had only scratched the surface of the city.
Buenos Aires is “The Paris of the Southern Hemisphere,” but the last dozen years have been trying. “In 2001, Argentina hit rock bottom,” wrote Peter Greenberg. “The government fell again and in one fateful week, five presidents succeeded each other.” What might such a wealthy country have been like with better leaders? On our last full day, we took a ferry to Colonia de Sacramento in Uruguay.