This week we did two touristy things visiting the National museum of fine arts, which Nathan particularly enjoyed and also the Malba which is the modern art gallery, which was personally my favourite.
The rest of the time we have tried to do some things off the tourist track! I spent some time googling where we could get a view over the city as nothing seemed to be in the guide books or on trip advisor. I finally found a tower that you can climb up. It is in the middle of the tourist street, Florida, number 165 but if you aren't looking for it you would have no idea it is there. You go into 165 which is a shopping centre and take the lift to the top floor of some offices and there is a little desk where you pay $20 pesos (£1.50) and climb some spiral stairs, we were the only people there and had a great view over the city. It really highlighted just how vast Buenos Aires is! I know I have mentioned it a lot but it is absolutely massive!
Our next off the beaten track non-tourist adventure was on Saturday evening. Martin the son-in-law of the couple we are staying with asked if we wanted to go and see some live music and that he was going to play also, we jumped at the chance. They kindly drove us across town and we went into a house (well it looked like a house from the outside) and through into a large room with a really cool bar and lots of sofas. It reminded me of somewhere that would fit in Hoxton or Shorditch in London.
The performances were excellent! When Martin played he asked Nathan to join him for one song which was really cool, they played 'til there was you' by the Beatles (Nathan especially liked that an Argentinian girl asked Martin who his friend was 😉).
The last band that played were awesome, they were a group of 6 and I could have listened to them for hours, they have a Cuban feel to them and got everyone up dancing!
An interesting observation Nathan made was that in the UK it takes ages to get people up dancing to a band but in Buenos Aires everyone was up moving and men were grabbing girls to dance with and everyone seemed so free and happy. Everyone kisses here and Nathan joked and said he will start greeting his male family members with kisses (watch out Steve, Mark and Joe he is coming for you!) But seriously it is such a friendly and easy going culture I am really loving it.
A great evening and another reason why using Airbnb can be fantastic to actually stay with a family and learn some inside secrets to a place. For those of you who haven't used airbnb before I would really recommend it as there are so many great places on there for all sorts of budgets. You can opt to stay with a family, or have a home to yourself or have a penthouse in top cities. It's a great website to book accomodation through as you end up being in fantastic areas in cities that don't have hotels. For example in New York City we managed to stay in the East Village which on previous visits had been my favourite area for bars and restaurants, so we managed to get an apartment on a street with some of the best food places. Nathan and I like a mixture of staying with locals and having some time on our own.
So the family we are staying with until Sept 24th already had a booking for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd so we have moved down the street to our own little studio flat for 3 nights. We move back in with Monica, Marcelo and Monica's mum who is visiting on Sept 4th. So today was move day, laundry day, running, ice bucket challenge and drinking mate.
Mate is a drink that everyone drinks in Uruguay and Argentina (maybe other South American countries but I haven't been there yet so unsure). It is a bunch of herbs that go into a special mug and then hot water is poured on top and it is drunk through a metal straw. In Uruguay especially people would carry a flash of hot water under their arms walking about the city and sip their mate through their metal straw, very fun to see. Everyone drinks it here in Buenos Aires but there are less people walking around with flasks of it.
Ok so my last local photo is from yesterday when we walked all over town and saw lots of fun things but I especially enjoyed watching these two break into tango in the street.