Whereas our first few days in Buenos Aires a week ago (only a week ago!) were characterised by quietness, today we found the busiest areas of the city – La Boca and the Sunday markets at San Telmo.
La Boca is one of those suburbs where around ever corner you think you’ve found the most colourful sight and you want to capture it – and then you turn the next corner … It is not a rich area, but it’s vivid and lively and packed with tourists in a way we haven’t seen in BA to date. It’s also bursting with pride for the local football team and where it’s not all the colours of the rainbow, the area, including its stadium and all of its public walls, is donned proudly in blue and yellow.
We visited La Boca’s modern art gallery, PROA, to see Indian artist Anish Kapoor’s exhibit ‘surge’ (which apparently is a word both in English and Spanish, but has different connotations in each, according to the gallery notes).
For the rest of the afternoon, we wandering around the sprawling Sunday antique markets in San Telmo, probably not even seeing half of the 2.2km (or so) of them. In amongst the stalls were performers – musicians and puppeteers, drumming groups, Charlie Chaplin lookalikes and a man dressed as if the wind was blowing strongly at his coat and his tie.
Our lunch/dinner was at another parrilla – Gran Parrilla del Plata – for more steak, a chorizo sausage and a delicious salad. I’ve probably had my iron intake for the year sorted and I can safely adopt vegetarianism.
I asked Dan what his favourite things about BA were and he said:
- The street art
- The parks and the trees (I’ll add that my favourite park is San Martin)
- Our 1880 parrilla meal (though he said that before we were served at the Gran Parrilla so maybe they’re on par?)
- PROA
- Wandering through the markets listening to musicians and watching street performers
It’s quite unbelievable to think that we’ve only been away a week. Amongst all we’ve done, I’ve somehow found enough quiet hours to finish the first book in the Game of Thrones series.
Our hearts break to daily read news from home about the bushfires and we hope to hear that the land and the communities are given a chance to start recovering soon.
VRPS
[Buenos Aires]
The Two Swords 