Walking Tour

We woke up just in time to grab breakfast at the hostel and join the 11:00am walking tour. The tour luckily met in the Plaza Congresso which is right in front of where our hostel is located. Our tour guide told us a bit about the tumultuous history of the Argentinian government and how things operate. They are currently in their longest period of democracy in their history: 30 years. Prior to that they were fluctuating between dictatorships and have had a lot of violence and unrest in the country as a result. Apparently there is not a single day where demonstrators are not protesting something in the city, which I thought was crazy!

The people staying in the tents were protesting Monsanto being in Argentina.

We walked by the pink house which is where the presidents' office is located. It is most famous as the balcony that Evita Peron gave her speeches from (think of the movie "Evita" staring Madonna, lol). Apparently a smaller flag is flown on the flag pole beneath the country flag when the president is there, which according to our guide is not often because she never works...lol. They had their presidential election while we were in Buenos Aires and their current president was not re-elected which everyone seemed thrilled about.

May 25th plaza is in front of the pink house and is definitely a location for protests. The plaza's name commemorates the May revolution of 1810 which started the process of the country's' freedom from Spain. On October 17, 1945, mass demonstrations in the Plaza de Mayo organized by the CGT trade union federation forced the release from prison of Juan Domingo Perón, who would later become President of Argentina (Evita's husband). During his time as president, the Peronist movement gathered every October 17 in the Plaza de Mayo to show their support for their leader. Since 1977, the plaza is where the "Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo" have congregated with signs and pictures of their children, who were taken by the Argentine military in war that started their national reorganization process. People perceived to be supportive of having left-wing ideas would be illegally detained, abused and tortured, and finally murdered in secret. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo took advantage of the symbolic importance of the Plaza to open the public's eyes to what the military regime was doing. They still meet every Thursday at the plaza and walk around the plaza for an hour in memory of their loved ones.

After the walking tour, we headed to "Cafe Tortoni" for coffee. This is a historic cafe that opened in 1858 and is well known throughout the city. Our coffees were delicious and just what we needed after a few hours of walking.

We decided that we would also go on the afternoon walking tour, since that tour covered a different part of the city and then we would have an entire city overview. The afternoon tour took us through the more affluent areas of town where we could see a lot of European architecture and influence. The pictures below were originally single family homes but have since been turned into boutique hotels or embassies.

After we finished our afternoon tour, we decided to head back to Pallermo for dinner. We were able to catch the metro down there (which is very easy and we have no idea why the girl who works at the hostel said she would never take the metro) and though we had planned to go to a Mediterranean place, we saw "Chipper" as we were walking and decided it sounded good. They served fish and chips...which sounds so weird to eat in Argentina but anything different sounds good when you eat the same kind of food every day. The place was owned by a guy from the UK and the food was delicious!

Afterwards, we went out in search of a bar. Everything seemed dead, but we stumbled upon "La Viola" which seemed to have some people so we stayed for a drink. No one spoke English, so we hung out watching old music videos on the flat screen before heading home for the night.

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