After dealing with some work unpleasantness, we’ve finally gotten into tourist mode and started seeing the city beyond our little area of San Telmo. Yesterday we took a tour on the Buenos Aires Bus which in the end turned out to show us much of what we’d already seen by ourselves in previous days but it was still fun to see things from a bit higher up and hear a little history on the side.
Two red heads on a bus. Yes, we forgot our hats...
We also went to the Japanese garden where we heard a lecture on Bonsai trees. At first we treated the whole thing as more of a joke but once the representative of the Buenos Aires Bonsai club (I kid you not!) started talking and showed us how to re-pot a bonsai, in this case a small ficus, it actually got very interesting and we learned quite a bit about plants in general and very small trees in particular.
A few days ago we also went to pay hommage to the most famous grave in the city, that of Eva Duarte de Perón aka Evita. Her remains are buried at the Recoleta cemetery, one of the oldest and most exclusive cemeteries in the city. They weren’t always there, in fact they only arrived back in Buenos Aires, after an extended stay in Italy and Spain, in the 70’s. If you want to read all the sordid details about that story, go ahead.
Our research into Argentinean beef has also continued with a visit to Cabaña Las Lilas, a steak restaurant owned by a ranch. (So convenient!) The meat was as good as we had hoped if not better. A little morbid perhaps – the steaks come out with a little plastic cow stuck in them that tell you how it’s cooked, i.e. “I’m medium!” Looks cute but just a tad disturbing…