 |
| 2024 Tango World Champions! |
We've now completed our 22-day Antartica adventure and are back in Florida. It was an amazing journey that took us to so many special places. Our time in Antartica was certainly the highlight, but there were many other special moments along the way. Our final port of call was the sprawling city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Close to four million people call the city of Buenos Aires home. If you include the surrounding metro area that number increases to over 17 million people. On the world stage Buenos Aires is considered an "Alpha City", meaning it plays a significant role in the international economic community.
Alpha, Beta and Gamma Cities
In recent years Argentina has had some struggles both economically and politically. As the largest, and capital city of Argentina, Buenos Aires has been at the center of much of the news regarding these struggles. In addition to what we had read/heard from the media, the Cruise Director on the Oosterdam (who we had really enjoyed), wasn't very helpful. Unfortunately, he had been the victim of a mugging in Buenos Aires in the past. According to him it happened in the middle of the day and in a very popular city park that was full of families at the time of the incident. While I can certainly understand the trauma this caused, I think he went well beyond reason sharing his story and warning us about the dangers that we were going to encounter. It seemed that some people even changed their plans after hearing his port talk. We even joked that we should probably exit the port with a white flag and our hands in the air!
 |
Great architecture near the city center
|
 |
| The Flower Sculpture in the Plaza de Lac Naciones Unidas. The flower opens during the day and closes at night. Unfortunately, it was recently damaged when a storm with hurricane strength winds hit Buenos Aires. The storm also damaged the port area. |
 |
| The open air market near the Plaza de Mayo was busy with locals and tourists. |
 |
| The Casa Rosada (The Pink House) is Argentina's Government House. It is located on the Plaza Mayo and is the site for both protests and celebrations. The biggest celebration in recent years (and possibly ever) was when Argentina won the World Cup in 2022. |
We had visited Buenos Aires twice before. While it had been a few years back we had very fond memories from those visits, and were curious as to what we would find. We booked a three-hour city highlight tour once we were off the ship ($30 per person) that we really enjoyed. The tour covered many of the main tourist sites near the city center, some of which we had enjoyed previously. It was a Sunday afternoon, and the city was very lively, really clean, and everyone was very friendly.
 |
| La Boca is a very colorful working-class neighborhood. It's known as the birthplace of the Tango. |
 |
| Food and drink were plentiful. We found some amazing empanadas.....they didn't last long enough to get a picture. |
 |
| Colorful buildings and colorful murals! |
 |
| Argentina is known for its great meat. There was plenty on the grill in La Boca! |
Yes, with any big city you have to be vigilant (and I'm not saying our cruise director wasn't). I have no doubt that the trauma of what happened to him is real, but to stereotype the whole city as an unsafe combat zone was very unfair! If you find yourself in Buenos Aires, be safe but get out there and enjoy this dynamic alpha city!
