3 More Days in BA

Tuesday:

We're back at our new hotel in BA by early Tuesday afternoon. We leave for home on Friday. We've got a few things to do in that time.

Our hotel for the last few days is owned by the same people as the first. It's in the San Telmo part of BA, the same general area of BA as our first hotel. Each area had it's pluses and minuses, but it'd be pedantic to start detailing them. The hotel itself has a big out-of-tune grand piano in the lounge room, a long entry staircase, and lot's of levels with rooms going off them from the outside. Interesting and again recommended.
http://www.bonitobuenosaires.com/en_santelmo_index.html

Searching for the room. Not wheelchair friendly.

Found

Anton's bed

We decided to spend the afternoon with a few basics. Back to the laundry near our old hotel to drop things off, into the city to look for a few things to take back home, and an early dinner. We've got our Juanes concert at Luna Park tonight, so the Subte (Metro) back to our hotel, then a bus into the city again later on. We ended up getting a nice piece of glassware in the city to take home - not necessarily Argentinian, but something which looked nice and hadn't seen before. The one problem was working out how to get it back to Australia in one piece. Taking it on the peak hour Subte involved standing and holding it with both hands above my head. Too packed to fall anywhere, so no need to hang on to anything. (The shop couldn't provide packing. Getting back on the plane as cabin luggage in one piece was also an achievement.)

30cm tall glass. All the way home without any packing. An achievemment.

There's a bus around the corner that goes down towards Luna Park so we head off down there for our 8:30 concert. Luna Park is apparently an old boxing stadium converted to a concert hall.  Packed out for tonight's concert.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa7Vc03Vl1E
We found a bus back towards our hotel around 11:00ish after a big day starting in Santiago at 5:00am.

Wednesday:

A latish wake-up, but in time for breakfast. A few more people at this hotel - an English couple in BA for a week and 2 Singaporeans who'd packed in their jobs in Singapore and travelling around the world for best part of a year - including plenty of time in BA. They'd just arrived. Seems like they were on the same wavelength - they'd spent the previous afternoon just walking around B.A. and absorbing the place.

Anton politely bent his knees to try and appear shorter

The BA zoo stated they had Red Panda bears, so we decided we'd better go and pay them a visit. Bus ride, walk, eventually got there. They also had emus and kangaroos, so we thought we'd better check that they hadn't been Argentiniated yet. Plenty of ineresting fish and animals on the way around - piranah, bears, all the  other usual zoo animals with a South American tinge to it.

 We eventually found the Red Panda cage. With some translation, we found out that "it's very shy, and spends most of it's time inside it's house". We came back a few times - no Red Panda. Maybe some other zoos around the world might keep that line up their sleeves. (Reykavic Zoo, Iceland - "Our Sumatran Tiger is shy and keeps mainly in it's house"?). As for the Kangaroo and Emu - no house to be shy in - they just weren't there. Maybe home on holidays. Anyhow, the zoo was OK.

Back to the city. A few souveniers, Latin CDs, a wander around, more credit on our SUBE passes, collect washing, etc, etc.

A forgotten challenge was crossing the 18 lane road in one set of lights like some of the locals (Av 9 de Julio plus the 2 side roads).The basic steps:

1. Leave after the last car and before the green pedestrian light
2. Walk briskly (no need to run)
3. (Pretend to) Ignore turning traffic - YOU HAVE YOUR RIGHTS ! (but get ready to leap out of the way when they ignore you)
4. Keep going after the lights turn green. There's enough time to finish crossing before the cars run you over.

Easy as. I'm sure it's part of the citizenship test.

Dinner that night was around the corner from our hotel at El Hipopotamo. Nice meal, good value, plenty of locals there is always a good sign.

Back to the hotel for some Mendoza red and a few games of cards.

Thursday:

Clay court tennis. Anton had demanded a rematch. We'd noticed another "Tenis" sign near the Congress building coming back from the zoo, so we'd booked an hour for Thursday. It was about an hour away by bus/walk, so off we went. It's located on top of a 3 story building in the middle of a shopping area. 3 good quality clay courts with high nets around them. I'm sure there was a sign 'No High Lobs' in Spanish somewhere, because if you did a high lob and missed the court, you'd hit either a person, a car or a bus (and lose your ball).

We had a problem. There were 2 people playing our court that we had to kick off.
We didn't have a problem. One was the manager of the hotel we were staying in. An hour away, he rarely played tennis, only ever played here twice before, 12 million people in BA. What's the chance of that !

Anyway, we had our hour of tennis. Must get a good clay court at home. They're definitely different to other types of courts. I lost all sets on this court to Anton, so I obviously prefer the rougher clay with rocks in it. He preferred this one. 1 match all. I settled on that. Back to the hotel for a wash. The clay courts leave their mark on you.

For our last afternoon, it was a return to Boca for a few things to take home. After coming across the Hotel manager at tennis, we came across the Singaporeans at Boca. 12 million people in BA ? It's not THAT large after all.

Back to our hotel with our goods, a last bus down to the city and a wander around Puerta Madiera (Waterfront area) at night.

Back to El Hipopotamo for a last meal in BA.

Plenty of things left to do in BA. Plenty of things to do again. A great excuse to come back.

Buenos Noches.