Buenos Aires is known as the “Paris of South America”. Similar to Parisian arrondissements, its 3 million people are spread across 48 neighbourhoods or barrios.
We stayed in the largest one, Palermo and Mhairi adored the neighborhood feel: shopping at the local baker’s, greengrocer’s and butcher’s most days. Gradually the shop-workers got to recognise us and would patiently put up with our stuttering attempts to translate how many thousands of pesos our groceries cost and even “yaaay!!” with us when we occasionally got it right.
The shops reminded us that the biggest cultural difference we experienced wasn’t actually the language, it was timing. Now we don’t mean the 3-hour difference with the UK. That worked in our favour as people at home were already well into their day by the time we got up and it felt that we were somehow already a step ahead when we got up. No, we mean that the Argentinians lived in a completely different timeline from us. For instance, the butcher’s didn’t shut at 5pm, as it ought to, but stayed open until 9.30pm in the night time!! It seems incredible that, in Buenos Aires, there are lots of people who not only haven’t eaten their dinner by a respectable 7pm but haven’t even bought the ingredients to begin cooking it until half an hour before any sensible person’s bedtime. So it didn’t surprise us, when we left to catch our early morning flight to Brazil, we discovered the streets were jam-packed with revellers at 4.30am, the poor souls!
We’d left Glasgow on a dark, dreich Thursday morning, giddy with excitement, bearing fresh puncture wounds from our Yellow Fever jags and carrying a bundle of US dollars in our pockets. (Note to any travellers: ATM charges in South America are outrageous and it’s much better to exchange cash.) We were eager to be on the road again and jumped into the airport taxi as enthusiastically as kids on Christmas morning and then immediately leapt out again as Mhairi noticed she had forgotten her phone!
Not the perfect start but Gerry did get the chance to thank Martin O’Neill personally for coming back to Celtic – yet again – as he bumped into him leaving the gents in Heathrow airport.
Buenos Aires is renowned for its architecture but, as it turned out, we seriously underestimated the monumental scale of this city. Driving in from the airport gives a sense of its geographical spread but it is the grand design of the buildings and infrastructure that makes it so spectacular. By the turn of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world and it flaunted its wealth in the numerous big, beautiful buildings in the city centre and extending out beyond it.
You know what they say, “Big buildings, big roads” and Buenos Aires has the widest avenue anywhere, up to 20 lanes if you include the buses. It was built to be twice as wide as the Champs Elysées presumably so the locals could say, “The Paris of South America? Pah! Perhaps Paris is the Buenos Aires of Europe.”
In a city that offers lavish rewards for looking up, it’s wise to look down too. The trees whose branches shade the pavements also have roots that have dislocated pavements that can already be a little, er, haphazard. When you also factor in the many dog walkers (sometimes with ten dogs each), it pays to watch where you place your feet.
That said, getting around the city is very easy. Ubers are plentiful and incredibly reasonable and the Buenos Aires metro is very efficient, clean and safe. It’s not peaceful though. There’s either a violinist, a rapper, or someone selling socks or bin bags. The vendors will put their goods on your knee and collect it when you don’t buy. It’s always something practical so you often see someone making a purchase. So there’s no pressure and the locals seem more supportive of the vendors and artists than their counterparts would be on the Tube. As an added bonus, many of the subway stations are beautifully decorated.
At the heart of the city in Pope Francis’ old Metropolitan Cathedral, Gerry came across an unexpected echo of Glasgow. Among all of the side chapels and statues, there is a piece depicting a homeless man on a bench. It reminded him of a similar piece in Mandela Square in Glasgow, titled “Homeless Jesus”. The shrouded figure is identifiable from the wounds in his feet. Apparently there are more than 50 of these worldwide and we’ll have to search out the one in Belfast next time we’re back.
As well as the urban architecture, Buenos Aires has a richness of parks and squares. In our neighbourhood, there are the Palermo Woods, a vast green space larger than Central Park. One tiny part of it includes the Insta-perfect Rose Garden, filled with as many selfie-takers as roses. We visited Belgrano park one Saturday evening to watch the locals meet up to dance the Milonga and the Tango, only to encounter another example of our “timing” disparity. We arrived around 6.30pm and presumably the dancers didn’t really get started until 10.30pm. There were only a few of them, significantly outnumbered by the Zumba class exercising only a few yards away.
In United Nations Park, there is a massive silver flower. Not an actual plant but a sculpture called Floralis Genérica, made of steel and aluminum. Its mechanism was designed to automatically close its petals in the evening and open them again in the morning and its creator romantically called this “a hope reborn every day at opening”. Like any proper project however, real life got in the way because one of the petals was improperly installed during assembly and it has only worked intermittently since installation in 2002. It’s a shame that it doesn’t work as intended but it is still a very striking piece.
The most loved of all the parks was the Ecoparque when Meadhbh visited it on her birthday. From 1888 (an auspicious year!) it was a zoo but, in June 2016, the city formed a view about the zoo’s cruelty. They closed the zoo and relocated most of the animals to nature reserves. It’s now an ecopark…”WAIT! Hold on a minute. You never told us Meadhbh was in Buenos Aires with you!!”
Didn’t we? Well, we really should have because that was the absolute highlight of our trip, having friends and family with us. Surely we’ve already mentioned that before we retired, there was a lot of chat with Keith and Mike, who Mhairi worked with, and their wives Jill and Rach about meeting up somewhere once we were on our travels. Buenos Aires seemed like a top choice so we’d been looking forward to it for ages. Then, even better, we managed to talk Meadhbh into coming too. Admittedly, it didn’t take too much to persuade her. We had an absolute ball.
Anyway, back to the Ecoparque. We visited it with Meadhbh on her birthday like good parents. It was wonderful to celebrate it with her as normally we miss it because we’re in some different part of the world! Meadhbh had a blast seeing all the animals in the morning, having ice cream in the afternoon and an amazing dinner in the evening. The steaks at Desnivel were huge and juicy and the staff led the singing of Happy Birthday in Spanish and then in English, which was a little ironic as Meadhbh was the only one of the seven of us who could actually speak both languages.
Poor Meadhbh. We think she enjoyed her trip overall but are pretty confident she won’t miss the sensation of six blank faces turning hopefully to her every time someone spoke Spanish to us. Or our incessant chats about football and tax policy!!
Jill and Keith are fellow retirees and Jill’s birthday happened to fall in Buenos Aires as well. Keith had booked Don Julio Parilla, which holds the top spot on the “world’s 101 Best Steak Restaurants”, has a Michelin star and is ranked among the top 10 restaurants globally. You know what they say, “Big reputation, big prices” but whatever it cost would be well worth it for world class food with even better company. As it turned out, the waiter recommended sharing one main course per couple. Apparently having one each would be a serious, er, mis-steak.The staff made a real fuss over Jill and comped a cake and ice creams. Admittedly, we’re not professional food critics but we’d say it “wasnae too bad at all, right enough”. And excellent value for such a delicious meal.
Mike and Rach aren’t retirees – well, someone has to pay for our pensions – but, like the rest of us, were absolutely blown away by the city. Rach loved Buenos Aires for being so sweet-toothed. There are more desserts and sweets here than Celtic fans who were at Seville and a particular favourite was the classic dulce de leche. Mike couldn’t believe how reasonable it was for day-to-day costs. He certainly wasn’t looking forward to going back to UK prices. Perhaps the only disappointment Mike had during the whole time was the realisation that the unexpected present of a pair of socks from Keith and Jill referenced one of the greatest goals of all time, the Hand of God.
There’ll be more on Buenos Aires later but our next blog is all about our trip to Iguazú Falls.
It's a wanderful life, so it is 
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