Our delightful time in Buenos Aires has continued!
One of our favourite things to do in a city is take a food tour - and we were especially excited for our Buenos Aires food tour since it was going to be through San Telmo, an area known for its market and excellent restaurants. With our food tour not getting under way until late morning, we took our time getting down to the starting point, enjoying a leisurely breakfast and popping into some shops on the walk down to San Telmo.
Soon enough, we met our guide from Sherpa Food Tours and started learning more about Buenos Aires, its history and its delicious food. Once again, we learned so many interesting things so here are just a few of the highlights:
Maté is the caffeinated beverage of choice in Argentina because they don’t have coffee. There’s a ritual around maté and it’s the national beverage of Argentina.
You can tell the filling of an empanada based on how it’s closed.
Malbec translates to bad taste because the French thought it was terrible wine when they first had it.
We heard a bit about Argentina’s darker history in the 1970s when there was a dictatorship and thousands of people disappeared, including hundreds of children that were never returned to their families. DNA testing started to reunite these families in the early 2000s, decades later.
We had so many tasty things on our tour, including empanadas from a place EDP had been wanting to try, blue cheese & pickle pineapple on a palmier, dulce de leche & alfajores and it was all topped off with some delicious ice cream. We also got to wander around the San Telmo neighbourhood, including touring through the market, which is a mix of little restaurants & little food shops. It was a really enjoyable and delicious way to spend a few hours.
We didn’t have anything else planned for our afternoon so on our guide’s advice, we grabbed a cab down to Caminito, a colourful street filled with artisans and a surprising number of impromptu tango shows! We spent a lovely hour looking around, enjoying the bright buildings before heading back to yesterday’s lunch spot for a really excellent dinner. We did skip the flan this time, though!
Our final day in Buenos Aires was pretty full. We started off with a long walk up past Recoleta to Parque Tres de Febrero. The first garden we visited, Jardín Botánico Carlos Thays, was mostly native greenery with a few flowering plants. There was also a small butterfly garden that had some pretty little butterflies fluttering around. Our second garden was El Rosedal, a rose garden, which was much more manicured. It was a very pretty stroll through the garden - and I was really excited to see a monk parakeet on the way in! We finished our garden adventures off with the Jardín Japonés, which was much busier than the other gardens. It was also quite lovely with massive koi in the pond.
Once we had our fill of the gardens, we headed to one of the larger art galleries, Museo Nacional de Bella Artes. There was some beautiful art, including a surprisingly extensive Rodin collection, which was very interesting. We also managed to squeeze in Museo Histórico Nacional, which I wasn’t sure we’d have time for. My favourite part of it was the painting that had a bunch of extra historical figures painted into it to make the historical moment seem more substantial. On our way back to the hotel, we ducked into Galería Solar de French, a delightful little shopping gallery with colourful umbrellas suspended overhead. It was so pretty. We also ended up going through Plaza de Mayo again so we got to see it in the sunshine, a nice little perk of our walk.
We ended our day with a tour of Palacio Baralo, which I was also really looking forward to. It’s this old office building that was inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. It’s one of Buenos Aires’ most emblematic places. We had such a wonderful tour, where we learned all about the building and how it came to be:
The lobby represents hell! There are bronze and glass flowers in the floor that used to be lit from below. The light fixtures had 9 bulbs, representing the 9 circles of hell Dante has to go through to get out. There is also a replica of a condor statue that has been lost twice. First, it was stolen in the 1920s before showing back up in the 1990s. It was then lost again and they’ve never found it. The condor was meant to help Dante get to paradise and was also intended to be a mausoleum for Dante’s ashes. Was Dante interred in Buenos Aires? No! But the guy who started the whole thing had the “if you build it, they will come” philosophy and thought if he created a spot for Dante’s ashes, surely they would be sent to him. It didn’t happen.
Head up a few floors and you get to purgatory. Purgatory has 14 floors and this really fascinating circle that represents perfection. From the main floor, it looks like a cupola but it’s actually just a flat ceiling that has been painted to look three dimensional from the ground. Very cool.
Once you get to that 14th floor, you’re in paradise. There are no decorations and everything is lighter & simpler, representing that you need to get rid of material things to get into heaven.
We also got to ascend up to the lighthouse, where the light is meant to represent the divine light of heaven. The sun was setting over the city so we had gorgeous views of the entire city at dusk and into early evening. Stunning!
It was an incredibly fascinating tour and a highlight of Buenos Aires for me. We ended our evening with another tasty dinner, our last real meal here in the city. Overall, the last few days have been fantastic. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city that we’ve enjoyed exploring and I would love to spend more time here.
We’re now en route to Iguazú Falls with a slightly delayed flight. We’re spending our day tomorrow taking in the falls from both Argentina and Brazil. I’m pretty excited for this but we are expecting rain so that’ll be less fun. I still have my rain cape, though, so I’m all set!