Argentinians living outside Buenos Aires often say BA should not even be considered a part of Argentina - it is just BA and its citizens are simply portenos. For me BA is like a condensed Argentina - full of extremes but winning you over once you give it a chance.
Even coming to BA proved extreme - storm delayed our flight by 4 hours, but then after 8h with no food we managed to get to the hostel from the airport in just an hour. Hostel seemed nice but seeing our voucher simply said that they were full with no trace of our reservation... Disaster was solved with help of 4* hotel next door with hostel's price :-) All was good until we opened our bags - backpack covers apparently do not work during storms and half of the clothes were wet... Chinese run automated dryers do miracles and finally with some delay we hit the town.
And extreme BA keeps on coming. Hip cocktail bars in run-down art nouveau buildings, futurist places neighbouring Dirty War memorials, palms competing with Xmas trees, crazy football fans walking along garbage collectors... If this was not enough we went to Boca part of BA where even locals told us not to go (unaware of the apparent danger eventually helpful lady got us out to a main street...) but there found a local restaurant with best steak I have ever had in my life. Extreme enough? Then found a US$ exchange place with rates 30% higher than banks (really not a scam, just parallel economy), lost a camera to find it 5 minutes later, walked like maniac crossing 18-lane street with biggest Coke adverts I've seen. To relax we even went to see 'Hobbit' - another high octane emotions which made me fight orcs all night... And this was just the first 24 hours!
BA pushes you to extremes, that sometimes your mind processing kind of jams and you just freeze. You know the feeling - like when you leave the cinema into dark and empty city not knowing where you actually are. But the best thing awaits you when you finally wake up - you are still in Buenos Aires...
Even coming to BA proved extreme - storm delayed our flight by 4 hours, but then after 8h with no food we managed to get to the hostel from the airport in just an hour. Hostel seemed nice but seeing our voucher simply said that they were full with no trace of our reservation... Disaster was solved with help of 4* hotel next door with hostel's price :-) All was good until we opened our bags - backpack covers apparently do not work during storms and half of the clothes were wet... Chinese run automated dryers do miracles and finally with some delay we hit the town.
And extreme BA keeps on coming. Hip cocktail bars in run-down art nouveau buildings, futurist places neighbouring Dirty War memorials, palms competing with Xmas trees, crazy football fans walking along garbage collectors... If this was not enough we went to Boca part of BA where even locals told us not to go (unaware of the apparent danger eventually helpful lady got us out to a main street...) but there found a local restaurant with best steak I have ever had in my life. Extreme enough? Then found a US$ exchange place with rates 30% higher than banks (really not a scam, just parallel economy), lost a camera to find it 5 minutes later, walked like maniac crossing 18-lane street with biggest Coke adverts I've seen. To relax we even went to see 'Hobbit' - another high octane emotions which made me fight orcs all night... And this was just the first 24 hours!
BA pushes you to extremes, that sometimes your mind processing kind of jams and you just freeze. You know the feeling - like when you leave the cinema into dark and empty city not knowing where you actually are. But the best thing awaits you when you finally wake up - you are still in Buenos Aires...
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