A Great Day in the City Center

We had another great day today exploring Buenos Aires - helped by very mild temperatures and overcast skies most of the time.  We figured out the subway system (it is painfully easy) and rode in to Plaza Lavalle in the city center.  Checked out the plaza and took some pictures of the beautiful buildings, including the Jewish Temple.

From there, we walked along a zigzag route toward Congreso...stopping at a bunch of Tango shoe shops that Rose had mapped out.  After looking over the Plaza de los Dos Congresos, we headed down Avenido de Mayo and turned left on Avenido 9 de Julio to look at the Obelisk.  We couldn't get too close because they were setting up what we think might be the route for the Dakar race, which begins in Buenos Aires on January 1 and will be following Rose and I to Cafayate around January 3!  From there, we continued on a block to find a pizza place called Las Cuartetas that Rose had read about.  The pizza was FANTASTIC!  We had sausage, onion, tomato, and mozzarella and washed it down with a beer. 

After finishing our pizza we again zigzagged through some streets to check out another batch of tango shoe shops Rose had on her list.  There, at one particularly nice shop - Flabella, with particularly helpful (although totally mono-linguistic) employees, Rose found her shoes.  Beautiful red tango shoes...I can actually appreciate them for their beauty too - which is saying something (It helps that they were about 40% less than I figured we would end up spending). 

From there we continued on to Plaza de Mayo, complete with protesters angry that the government has "forgotten about" veterans of the "dirty war" from the late 1970s into the early 1980 (they are apparently there every weekend).  We saw the Pink House (the office of the President) and other rather large stone government buildings (Minister of Economics, Central Bank of Argentina, Minister of Silly Walks).  This might be a good time to mention that the buildings in Buenos Aires really speak to a time when Argentina had serious money (it was one of the wealthiest nations in the world in and around 1902)...these buildings are truly world-class.  Beautiful and built to last - everything of stone...BIG limestone stones. 

After passing by the pink house, we walked down to the old docks at Puerto Madero.  What used to be the shipping hub of Buenos Aires has now been turned into the most expensive real estate in the city, with new buildings popping up like mushrooms, trendy restaurants and cafes, and a new pedestrian bridge to the island.  There is also an old 1897 sailing Frigate that the Argentine navy used as a training vessel for decades and sailed it around the world 40 times. 

At this point though, we had had quite a day, including a lot of walking.  We grabbed a coffee at a very old cafe at the edge of San Telmo, cooled off for a bit, and made our way back to the subway station. 

Dinner tonight will probably be at Don Julio...supposedly a great place for steak, and just around the corner from our apartment.