24 September -- Buenos Aires

After what I assure you was a very entertaining initial foray into the Spanish language, during which I had to describe to our cabbie where our hotel was because we didn't have the address or phone number, we set off on a prearranged city tour to get a feel for the city and its various barrios.

First off was the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace from which Juan and Evita Peron made their charismatic speeches.

They say that it's pink because in the old days, when the river was a lot closer to downtown, they painted the buildings with bovine blood to protect the stone from humidity damage. Now it's just tradition.

Cut me some slack, this picture was taken from a moving bus. I'll probably dig out some better pictures later. This is Avenida 9 de Julio, the biggest street I've ever seen. It's 8 lanes in each direction and takes 2 lights to cross. The big obelisk is a great landmark in the Microcentro -- after big wins in football matches, fans circle the roundabout for hours in celebration.


Next stop was the barrio of La Boca. Most of this area isn't very safe for gringos, so you'll only see us in the small Caminito tourist area.

Like the Casa Rosada, the paint jobs here are traditional -- it is said that the original multicolored houses were the result of citizens painting with whatever leftovers they could find in the shipyard. Today the effect is more for tourist cameras and garish street art.



Chris gets absolutely all the credit for this one. There are seemingly constant tango shows outside cafes in La Boca -- here he caught them on a break. This one's probably going on our wall.


This wasn't on the bus tour, but it's funny. No one uses public pay phones in Argentina -- they're unreliable and expensive. Instead, there are locutorios everywhere. These are little shops where you go into a little glass booth and make all your phone calls, and pay for everything at the end.

This just shows how ubiquitous the damn things are.