Sunday, May 6, 2012

Buenos Aires as a tourist

(April 28 - May 2)

I was warned that as a European, Buenos Aires would have unlikely surprised me for urbanistic and architectural features. Well, I have to admit,  the eyes rarely find a little beauty where to rest most of the time. With a few exceptions, though.

A heap of different styles.
La Boca, the area where a lot of immigrants from Genoa, Italy, came a long ago and that hosts the older harbor in the city (a pretty small one, as the waters are not deep enough for big cargo boats). The colorful houses make this barrio (quarter) quite unique. The houses were colored with what was left of the colors used to paint the boats, or at least this is what I was told. 

La Boca is also a tourist trap.
The second (chronologically speaking) harbor is Puerto Madero. The harbor was actually used only for 30 years. In the 90's the city decided to make a new barrio in this area. Since then, this has become the richest area in the city, with skyscrapers and some space for strolling around.

The fast development of Puerto Madero is to be linked to the fact that the Soy price  has been increasing in the last years. 
But I guess Buenos Aires has much more to give you if you really live it, rather than if you stay there for a few days as a tourist. We visited the barrios of Palermo, Recoleta and Bodeo as well, for bars and restaurants or theater. But we could only grasp very little of what is the everyday life of this huge city. 

La Presidenta is looking for popular support for the decision of nationalizing YPF.
The politics of the last years in Argentina is extremely interesting, especially
if  compared with the Greek crisis of these months.
For more about this, see an interesting article on Le Monde Diplomatique.

Numbers. Bus is extremely cheap, only 1.25 AR$ while the subway is 2.5 AR$. Public transport definitely works well. You might want to use a cab, also not expensive, at night, if you are coming late and you do not know which bus to take.

No comments:

Post a Comment