Today our plan was to see more of Buenos Aires. We took a bus to La Boca which is a very colorful barrio / neighborhood of BA. Nicola had visited it with her class but they were only allowed them to stay there for about 10 minutes because they were told it is a very unsafe area. So we were incredibly paranoid about walking around the area with cameras and purses. Interestingly enough, a middle aged guy with a clean white shirt, nice sunglasses and jeans got on the bus about two stops after we did and ended up staying on the bus all the way to LaBoca which was the last stop -- everyone has to get off. I didn't really pay much attention to him until the end because there was only the four of us and two or three other people on the bus. Plus, he kept changing seats. Anyway, we all got off the bus and he kind of lingered around the bus stop. When we crossed the street to look at the river he crossed as well, just ahead of us. We took our time and stopped and started. We passed him. He seemed to always be a little ahead or behind us. I swear he was following us. Once we got the the touristy area he stayed looking at some of the paintings and we worked our way into the crowd.
La Boca is kind of like Cancun, lots of people trying to get you to come into their shops and people dressed in tango costumes and wanting you to have your picture taken with them. It was a little much. There is also a significant amount of Pope memorabilia since the current Pope is from Buenos Aires.
We looked in shops and ambled around the area for about an hour but didn't feel like you could venture outside the two or three block radius. So we took a cab from there. (I didn't want to try to take the bus because the Bus Stop was out of the area and didn't seem safe. We had the cab drop us off at the Plaza Mayor. When we got there we heard fireworks / booms and a marching band and we realized there was a protest going on.
We think the protest was about the income tax system in Argentina.
It had been kind of a stressful morning so we decided to walk down Puerto Madero and then through the Buenos Aires Ecological Park. We didn't walk through the whole thing but did about 4 miles of it. It was much more relaxing and end up being very refreshing!
This evening we had a dinner reservation at Steaks by Luis - authentic Argentine private dining. I have to say it was quite amazing! It was actually in the same place that we had our wine tasting. I guess that location is rented by a few different people that use it to "entertain" in this secret dining fashion.
Our five course meal consisted of:
The meal was amazing and the people we dined with were just and interesting:
Below are just a few shots of our dining experience.