Today we ventured out to San Telmo and La Boca (in the south of the city), then caught a bus back up to Recoleta later in the afternoon.
We walked from our hostal down Calle Florida towards Plaza de Mayo and then on towards the crafts and antiques markets in San Telmo. San Telmo is known as the artists district, and so there are loads of antique shops and a huge antiques market on the weekends, along with art and craft stalls filling numerous side streets. We spent about two hours wandering around the markets and shops and watching tango dancers strut their stuff.
After a cheap, simple lunch at a small old cafe we continued to walk towards Parque Lezama where we found even more craft stalls. After a quick look around there we caught a bus to La Boca and the old artists district of La Caminito. La Boca is one of the poorer neighbourhoods in BA, and the first thing that hits you is the awful smell coming from the stagnant water in the port. We were walking along beside the river and saw that there were lots of police about, and then noticed a large group of people that had gathered up ahead of us. We still haven't worked out whether it was a protest or whether it was the opposition supporters for the Boca Juniors game - but it was all pretty peaceful anyway.
we continued on another couple of blocks to La Caminito, which is an area of a few blocks where all the buildings have been painted in bright colours. It originally started off as an artists district, but now it is really more of a tourist attraction, but it looked pretty stunning anyway, as you can see from the photos above. We had a pretty fun time wandering around the restaurants and bars and watching more tango dancers and taking lots of photos.
We then caught a bus back up to the north side of central BA to Plaza San Martin (near the main bus and train station - Retiro). We had a bit of a wander around there, and then walked towards Recoleta - one of the most upmarket suburbs in BA and famous for its cemetery (which was what we were going to see). Recoleta was a complete contrast to La Boca with very flash apartment buildings (that looked like 5-star hotels), and lots of embassies and ambassadors residences. The cemetery is surrounded by a large park, which turns into a huge market on the weekends, so we spent a while wandering around and bought a cool mate and bomb (mate = tea cup made out of a dried gourd, and bomb = the straw that is used to drink mate). Mate is very popular in BA and we saw lots of people wandering around with a thermos of hot water under one arm and their mate in their hand, sucking away.
Next stop was Recoleta cemetery, which was absolutely fascinating, but a little weird and creepy at the same time. It is known as the city within a city, which actually is very apt, as most of the crypts are at least 3m high, and do look like mini buildings. Only the elite of BA society are buried here, so everything is very flash, with most of the crypts being made out of marble or onyx. Eva Peron is also buried here in her family crypt. The crypt itself is fairly non-descript, but it is adorned with flowers (the only crypt I saw that actually had flowers on), and was constantly surrounded by people, hence not that hard to find.
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