Day 14 (14th Jan): Buenos Aires in Antarctica and Argentina Travel log

We had our first “full” day in Buenos Aires - even though there have already been 4 days where we’d spent time here. I am still nursing a cough, so we took it easy and just went with our previously booked city tours - one to see the city, and one at night for a tango/dinner show.

The city tour started at 9:30 and lasted till 12:30. We went to Casa Rosada and Place de Mayo first, then to San Telmo market (which reminded us of the Grand Market at Budapest), then spent a chunk of time at La Boca, which is my favourite stop, and then a few minutes at Plaza de las Naciones Unidas. The tour then dropped us off at Teatro Colon, where we got a snack at a nearby cafe, and then went into the opera house for a 1:30 guided tour. The tour included the entrance ticket to the opera house, but the tour company didn’t give us a ticket that should admit two, but just one - in retrospect we should have just gotten the tickets ourselves - and the opera house somehow can’t manage to print the second ticket (which means they must know we’re supposed to have two tickets). So in the end one of the employees just let us in with one ticket. Their communication problem does not inspire confidence.

The theater itself is quite opulent, reminded us of Budapest’s opera house. But it’s supposed to be the second largest opera house in the world, behind the Met. It doesn’t feel big in the auditorium though. There was a lot of legroom between the seats, so maybe that’s why it felt more spacious, while the Met felt crammed.

When we were done it was 2:30, and we walked back to the hotel so I can nap for 3 ½ hours, till the tango and dinner show.

The tango/dinner show was at Aljebe, it was nice - the food was much better than I expected (the best steak I had all trip), and the show was quite good too. I like that they separated the two - the show doesn’t start till dinner is over. There were two seatings of the show, and we got the earlier one; the guide told us that there are actually 3 shows in the building - one was at the lower level. La Profeseure and I were saying that some of the dancers’ moves, we could have done ourselves. There was a middle section, with gaucho performance too, and that was neat because I’d never seen anything like that before. The only regret is that we didn’t get a picture of us taken in tango position - we are learning the Argentine tango, and had promised our dance teacher to take a picture in dance position in antarctica, and we forgot, and we missed the opportunity to do that at Caminito street, and now we missed that opportunity at the tango show… even though there was a professional photographer who took our pictures on the stage. We should have asked to do our own pose then.

Caminito Street at La Boca: