A Walk in the Park(s)

Monday, May 09, 2011

We took the city on foot again today, spending much of the time in several of its beautiful parks. We began in the Botanical Gardens, a dense, green oasis amid the busy streets of the Palermo neighborhood. We also walked through Palermo Soho and eventually back to the Japanese Gardens, a picturesque and tranquil park.

After a walk along the Avenida del Libertador, the city’s Museum Mile (with a few embassies, swank apartment houses, and parks thrown in), we stopped for a quick lunch of empanadas, picked up something at a market to round our yesterday’s leftovers for tonight’s dinner, and put our feet up in our apartment for an hour or so before heading out again.

We walked to the Plaza San Martin, where we joined another Buenos Aires Free Tour for an evening walk through the Retiro and Recoleta aristocratic neighborhoods.
Like Saturday’s city tour, this was conducted by an enthusiastic young local, proud of her city and eager to share some of its history and culture with visitors. Again, we were joined by a small group of travelers from all over the world, and we found the informal and informative tour great fun. If you’re headed this way, we think you’d do well to check out the tour group’s website at http://www.bafreetour.com/english-home .

We covered lots of ground today, all of it on foot, and we were happy to pop a couple of things in the microwave tonight and have dinner in our apartment.

A couple of notes about the streets of BA: once again, not every intersection merits either a stop sign or traffic light – guess we should be getting used to that. Also, street names are often difficult or impossible to identify; if they are named, it’s likely to be on a sign that has been sponsored by a local business whose name is more prominently displayed than that of the street!

Tomorrow will be our last day in BA; our long trip home begins in the evening, so we’ll have most of the day to explore a little more of the city.