Sunburned in Buenos Aires

The thing about Canadians in winter is: we're pale. So a day on an open tour bus can have some painful results. Nevertheless, it was a good thing to do.

We arrived in Buenos Aires New Year's afternoon after a 12-hour flight from Toronto. To my surprise I was able to sleep through most of it, waking in time to see dawn over the Orinoco River and Guyana. The sun really does come up fast at the equator.

Woke up a few hours later to find us flying over Paraguay. Realized I know nothing about that part of the world. Must find out more.

Landed uneventfully in Buenos Aires and immediately began mapping it onto Izmir. The airport is like Izmir's old one. The buildings are the same. The highways are the same. The taxis are similar. It just feels like home.

We didn't have much energy left for anything but a shower, dinner and bed. But yesterday morning we were ready to go. Walked along a pedestrian mall near us (on Florida), discovered a lovely mall made out of some old buildings with an arts centre on top, and stumbled upon an open-top bus tour of town. That's the way to get your bearings in a new place, we've always found, so that's what we did - all 4 hours of it. And with no top on the bus and the sun beating down almost directly overhead - lobsters are pale compared to me, at least. Never mind, it doesn't hurt too much any more and we did get something of a feel for the place.

Today we tried out the subway system. It got us near the yarn store area I'd heard about in this blog. After a bit of a walk through a definitely un-touristy part of town (that's why I like to hunt down yarn shops) we noticed that the shutters were being fastened over the shop windows. Oops - it's Saturday, and in much of the world stores close on Saturday afternoons. Oh well.

So we found ourselves in nearby Palermo Soho, a very trendy old part of town with yuppified shops and a great little craft market in one of the squares. It was a good one - the real craft makers were selling their stuff, and it wasn't like you see in all the craft markets in the rest of the world. I got a mother-of-pearl necklace (because I forgot to bring any jewellery at all) and enjoyed seeing what the latest things are in knitting and other woolen stuff: woven shawls in big wool seem the current trend. So it was good.

Taxi to the National History Museum across town didn't take long or cost much. The museum, though, was a letdown. We'd hoped for a bit more than 4 rooms of paintings of the fathers of the country; a bit about the indigenous people and the lives of early settlers would have been nice. Pity.

And now we're waiting to be picked up for an evening gaucho show. Touristy, yes, but we've kinda gotta see it. And it's another excuse to eat Argentine beef, which is turning out to be rather nice indeed.