Vibrant Buenos Aires, Argentina
On January 31, 2024, we embarked on a journey to Antarctica of the Celebrity Eclipse. The ship departed from Buenos Aires, so we left early to spend some time there. This article will explore Buenos Aires pre and post-cruise and hopefully give you a feel for this wonderful, vibrant city.
We arrived at around 9:00 AM on an overnight flight from the US. The line at passport control was massive, which caused a minor problem with our pre-arranged transportation to our hotel. I would suggest just catching a taxi to your hotel. It was about $40, similar to the price of a standard taxi. The drive is about 45 minutes to the center city and our driver gave us several tips on getting around and what to expect.
Our hotel was the Grand King Hotel, located in the 600 block of Lavalle Street. The hotel is in the San Nicholas neighborhood, right in the heart of the tourist district, about five blocks from all the major attractions. It seemed to be relatively new and well-maintained. The staff was very helpful, and we enjoyed it!
After putting our bags into storage for the day, we headed out for a snack and made our way towards the Teatro Colon, one of the best opera houses in the world, for a guided tour. The first stop was a local empanada shop! Two empanadas and two sodas cost less than $5 US, including a generous tip.
After lunch and browsing some shops, we visited Av. 9 de Julio, where we found The Obelisk. This monument was built in 1936 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Buenos Aires. It’s hard to imagine that there are many cities, and buildings for that matter, in South America that are older than our country. The obelisk is located in a small plaza in the middle of Avenida 9 de Julio, which was named to mark Argentina’s Independence Day and is one of the widest in the world, spanning up to 14 lanes of traffic in some parts.
Then, we headed a few blocks down the street for a tour of Teatro Colon. Many tours are offered daily in a variety of languages. If you’re going to book a tour, make sure you have selected your preferred language. English tours are only offered a few times per day. After the tour, we returned to our hotel with a stop for dinner. It was a long and tiring day, and we were ready to rest.
The next day, after a very good breakfast at the hotel, we had a Tigre River Delta Tour; we were picked up at our hotel and taken to the town of Tigre, about 45 minutes outside the city. We boarded a boat there, which I thought would be smaller but could hold around 100 people, and began our tour. Seeing how people lived, worked, and played in the delta was very interesting. We saw the Art Museum, a local school, boats that delivered groceries and mail, and people swimming and boating throughout the delta. It was a nice tour, and the guide was very informative however, the tour mentions a cathedral and wine tasting, neither of which was on the tour.
The next stop on the tour was the Puerto de Frutos, or the fruit market. The market is in Tigre, just a short drive from the port. It is a mixture of food vendors/restaurants and artisans featuring locally made wood, baskets, and souvenir shops. We were there on a Friday, and I’m not sure why, but many places were closed. It was a nice place but a little overrated, in my opinion.
After about a 30-minute visit, we drove through town to the Tigre Art Museum, which we had seen from the water. We did not have time to visit, but it was an interesting photo stop before returning to our hotel.
After returning to the hotel, we had one more thing that we wanted to visit before our cruise began the following day: the Punte de la Mujer, or Womans Bridge.
The bridge is supposed to represent a couple dancing tango, with the white mast symbolizing the man and the bridge’s curve, the woman. It is located on the riverwalk and provides a pedestrian walkway across the docks in the neighborhood of Puerto Madero. It is located along a river walk and is one of the few places in Buenos Aires where you can see the river. In a relatively new tradition, couples place “love locks” on the rails approaching the bridge and throw away the key, symbolically locking their love forever. We had a lock that we took to Europe to do this but were never able to, so we did it here!
A stop for dinner at our favorite little empanada shop concluded our pre-cruise visit to Buenos Aires. The rest of this article takes place on a day tour after our cruise while waiting for our return flight home.
The first stop on our post-cruise tour was through the neighborhood of Recoleta and the famous Recoleta Cemetery, where the remains of many of Argentina’s important political and social figures rest, including the remains of Eva Peron, commonly known as Evita, after which the movie Evita was made.
It has been called one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world and is one of the most visited sites in the city. This is due to the many mausoleums and vaults, which are the work of many important architects. Many are marble statues and sculptures. Over 90 vaults have been declared National Historic Monuments. Interestingly, the remains in the vaults are mostly above ground, and the coffins and ashes can easily be seen through the many windows. The remains of Eva Peron, are a different story. After the 1957 military coup, Eva’s body was, with the covert assistance of the Vatican, taken to Italy and buried in a Milan cemetery under a false name. Evita was far from Argentina, but she was not forgotten.
In 1971, her body was returned to her husband Juan Peron, who n had since remarried and was living in exile in Spain. In 1973, Juan Peron and his then-wife Isabel returned to Argentina. There, he was elected president with his wife as vice president. When he died the following year, Isabel was left to oversee the repatriation of Eva’s remains. After the restoration of her remains was complete, they were interred in the neighborhood of Los Olivos in Buenos Aires, where they remained until 1976, when another coup occurred. At that time, in operation overseen by the dictatorship, her body was finally taken to her family’s mausoleum in Recoleta Cemetery, where she lies 8 meters underground, in a crypt fortified like a nuclear bunker, so that no one should ever again be able to disturb the remains again. More likely, they did not want her to continue to be a symbol of the resistance.
Next, we headed to the neighborhood of La Boca. The neighborhood was established in the early 20th century when European and Asian immigrants arrived seeking a better life. Many of the immigrants came from the region of Italy called Liguria. Immigrants constructed their homes from the cheapest, plentiful materials, mostly wood and corrugated tin. Today, these houses are brightly painted, many in the yellow and blue colors of the Boca Juniors, one of Argentina’s most successful professional soccer teams.
Today, La Boca is a neighborhood filled with colorful houses and streets, such as the Caminito, where tango dancers perform for tips, and there are many market stalls, stores, and restaurants catering to tourists. La Boca is a fairly poor working-class neighborhood outside this tourist area.
Plaza de Mayo was the next stop on our city tour. It is the oldest plaza in Buenos Aires and the scene of all the most important political events in Argentine history. The plaza has become the scene of large social demonstrations, and even though protests were underway in the capital during our time there, they were not at the plaza during our visit. Since 1977, the plaza has also served as the meeting place of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, whose children who were ‘disappeared” during the 1976 – 1983 military dictatorship.
The plaza is home to the Metropolitan Cathedral, where Pope Francis celebrated mass for over 20 years before becoming pope; the Government House, the headquarters of the national government, where there is a famous balcony scene of Juan and Eva person in the movie Evita; the Pyramid of May, which was built to celebrate the 100th year of the Revolution, and a monument to Manuel Belgrano, creator of the national flag.
The final stop on our tour was the Aljibe Dinner & Tango Show. We booked this through the ship, but it can be booked directly through most travel portals. We weren’t sure what to expect but thought it would be a good way to kill some time. The show was fantastic! Dancing, singing, and a gaucho using bolas. We thought the show would be about 45 minutes. However, it was closer to 90 minutes long. Then there was the food; we had a choice between chicken or beef; the beef option was probably a 12 oz. prime cut of Argentinian beef! My wife said I don’t know what you paid for this, but it was worth it! Also, people who had seen a similar show at one of the tourist ranches said that this was much better. What a way to end the trip!
Though facing political and economic challenges, Buenos Aires is a thriving metropolitan city with many ways to dig into the local culture. We felt safe walking in the different neighborhoods, and all the people we met were wonderful. We look forward to returning sometime.
