Recoleta

Iguazu Falls to Buenos Aires. Hotel: Loisuites Recoleta

We were picked up at about 6:45am for a half hour drive to the airport. The plane left from Iguazu at 8:45am. It was a relatively easy check in and a short two-hour flight to get to Buenos Aires. Once again, we were met at the baggage claim area by our new guide, Florence. She was totally delightful, very animated and gave us so much information. She could not have been more helpful. Even when we got back to the hotel, she sat down with us and gave us more information about things we could do, where we could go, where we shouldn’t go and gave us a list of important phone numbers in case something went wrong. Florence told us that there are over 23,000 cabs in Buenos Aires, and they are ridiculously cheap. I think the most we paid to get into the downtown areas of the city, a 15- or 20-minute ride was the equivalent of six dollars.

We were finally able to check in to our junior suite in the LOI suites hotel. It was a very spacious room with a mini kitchen. Before setting out we decided to book a five-hour boat tour the next day that started at 1:30pm. However, we had a tour booked for the full morning and we’re wondering whether we would have time to make it for the boat tour. With some difficulty we finally reached our next morning guide, Hector and he said that he could drop us off where the afternoon tour began. In good time.

We headed out by a cab to a Sunday flea market and it’s a good thing we decided to take a cab because it was much further away than we thought. It started off a bit slow because we were in the wrong spot, but we finally found the market which was quite large. It was a gigantic flea market arranged by different categories like art, crafts, antiques, jewelry, glass etc. We decided to keep walking for what seemed like forever, down to the river canal boardwalk. We walked along to see a ship tied up in the canal and then started to make our way back to visit the opera house and have a tour. It was a bit confusing as we got our landmark Obelisks mixed up. We wandered around Plaza de Mayo with the "May Monument" in the centre, we learned later that this was not considered an obelisk. We wanted The Obelisco de Buenos Aires, a national historic monument, located in the Plaza de la República which was several blocks further on. Finally, we arrived quite tired only to find that out the Teatre Colon tour closed at 5 o’clock and we were 20 minutes late.

We took a cab back to the hotel had a snooze to get ready for an 8 o’clock pick up to take us to a special dinner and tango show downtown at a venue called La Ventana in the San Telmo area. It was a glorious old building decked out very lavishly. For dinner we had a choice of two appetizers, four main courses and three or four desserts. Lee and I both opted for the steak and it was outrageously large, and we could not possibly eat all of it, but it was perfectly cooked and well presented. We also were given a complimentary bottle of red wine. The show started at 10 o’clock, it was one of the most amazing shows we’ve ever seen. The physicality, the dancing, the costumes and the music were fantastic. The tables were close together and right beside us was a couple from Innsbruck Austria and we struck up very pleasant conversation, their English was excellent. Our driver picked us up right on schedule at 12 o’clock and drove us back to the hotel. Not long to bed.Read more