On Wednesday, we went for about a 15- mile round-trip “hike” across BA to the commune of San Telmo. (We love to walk and it helps us get to know a city in record time.) Enchanting cobblestone streets & antique shops abound in this precinct of Buenos Aires. The antique shops are the bario’s main vein. We expect to return to San Telmo on Sunday to visit their Sunday markets and watch the street tango dancers. On our way to San Telmo, we walked through the port area of Puerto Madero which has the highest real estate prices in South America. The port is full of high-end restaurants coupled with low & high-rise condominiums. We enjoyed a delightful lunch along the port area. It was interesting that there weren’t that many boats in the port area- clearly very few compared to NZ & Australia.
We walked back from San Telmo through the city plaza in front of the pink palace. There are, on average, 3 demonstrations a day in this area. We arrived with all of the political parties demonstrating with drums, songs & banners prior to the inauguration on Thursday (tomorrow). The election was a 52:48% split so every one is still pushing their agenda. There was a lot of passion in the plaza today. On Thursday, we were fortunate enough to catch the new president leaving one of the buildings near the Pink Palace. There was a large crowd with lots of police and security; however, we were able to slither through the crowds to near the front of the line. There was tremendous passion on Inauguration Day with intense chanting throughout the crowd. We honestly thought we were Argentenian with all the excitement surrounding us!