It won’t sound like it from the description of our first day, but we really enjoyed Buenos Aires. It’s a city we could have spent many more days exploring. It’s a big, sophisticated city of around 3 million people. The first day Ed and I were on our own and took a shuttle into the main tourist section. We had a couple of hours before an afternoon tour would start, so we walked the down a wide boulevard with a huge park in the center. There was a long pedestrian shopping street and we continued down there, not really shopping for anything specific, just browsing. They specialized in leather and expensive jewelry.
We were picked up for our tour, which would take us about an hour out of town for, of all things, a boat ride. You’d think we’d had enough of water, but noooo. Almost as soon as our tour bus left the port, the rains came, and did they come. Our guide told us that they had had more rain this year than he had ever seen; a year’s worth in two hours. And it looked like we were experiencing that again. The water was teeming, streets flooding; it was so amazing that our guide kept saying “Ohmigod”. We were scheduled for a short stop in San Isidro, which was an exclusive little resort town. From what I could see it was very cute and I was sorry that we were unable to stay and have a look. But it was raining much too hard.
We got to the boat dock and ran as fast as we could to the boat, but most of us were soaked to the skin in places that were unprotected by rain gear. It was a flat river boat with windows all around and immediately the windows fogged up and we couldn’t see much. The boat ride would take an hour so we set off, wiping the windows every couple of minutes, trying to see what there was to see. They served delicious coffee and Argentina’s favorite pastry, called Alfajor, which is two sugar cookies with chocolate in between.
Miraculously, the rain stopped and the sun came out about halfway through the ride. So we could see that we were traveling through a canal that was lined with small homes and cottages, most of which were weekend escapes for Argentinians.
On the way back to the ship we saw more of the city and were looking forward to the next day when we would take a short tour called In the Footsteps of Eva.
We were picked up for our tour, which would take us about an hour out of town for, of all things, a boat ride. You’d think we’d had enough of water, but noooo. Almost as soon as our tour bus left the port, the rains came, and did they come. Our guide told us that they had had more rain this year than he had ever seen; a year’s worth in two hours. And it looked like we were experiencing that again. The water was teeming, streets flooding; it was so amazing that our guide kept saying “Ohmigod”. We were scheduled for a short stop in San Isidro, which was an exclusive little resort town. From what I could see it was very cute and I was sorry that we were unable to stay and have a look. But it was raining much too hard.
We got to the boat dock and ran as fast as we could to the boat, but most of us were soaked to the skin in places that were unprotected by rain gear. It was a flat river boat with windows all around and immediately the windows fogged up and we couldn’t see much. The boat ride would take an hour so we set off, wiping the windows every couple of minutes, trying to see what there was to see. They served delicious coffee and Argentina’s favorite pastry, called Alfajor, which is two sugar cookies with chocolate in between.
Miraculously, the rain stopped and the sun came out about halfway through the ride. So we could see that we were traveling through a canal that was lined with small homes and cottages, most of which were weekend escapes for Argentinians.
On the way back to the ship we saw more of the city and were looking forward to the next day when we would take a short tour called In the Footsteps of Eva.
No comments:
Post a Comment