The Enigma of Buenos Aires

I had to check the definition of the word to ensure that I was using it correctly. An enigma is a person or situation that is difficult to understand. For me I think that word well describes Buenos Aires. We have now been here for almost a week and I can't get over the fact that the city looks so good. The buildings and streets are well maintained. The subway is clean and efficient. I feel safe here traveling around, in fact safer than Edmonton. There are lots of police. People are driving new cars. There are lots of businesses and shops which all seem to be doing good business. People seem happy. Argentina has had significant economic problems for a long time with rampant inflation. I really thought that BA would feel run down like Havanna Cuba but it doesn't at all. If one were to visit BA and Edmonton one would think that BA was a much more prosperous city despite having a GDP per capital of 25 percent of Edmonton's GDP. Crazy.

On Wednesday we decided to do a self guided walking tour of downtown BA. We started at Plazo de Mayo which is right beside the beautiful and ornate Casa Rosada- the pink presidential palace. Madonna in the movie Evita sings Don't Cry for me Argentina from the balcony of the palace. I don't think the real Evita sang from the balcony but maybe she sang in the palace or at least hummed some little diddies to herself. We visited the very beautiful Metropolitan cathedral built in 1750 with a very ugly neoclassical front added in 1820. We walked down the very beautiful Plaza de Mayo street admiring all of the skyscrapers built circa 1910. I felt that I could be in Europe. We crossed the widest street in the world Avenue 17th July. Looking up the street we could see a giant obelisk. Turning around there was an iconic image of Evita Peron on a building. It was 17 lanes wide and took us 3 lights to get across. We kept walking mesmerized by the beauty of the buildings. It was surreal. We walked past the Terra Colon, BA opera house. A beautiful stone clad building larger than La Scala in Milan. We finished our walk at the Galleria Pacifica, a very high end shopping mall with all of the world's high end stores. The walk was supposed to only take 2 hours but somehow we managed to take 4. We weren't finished yet as we still had to see Argentina 's largest bookstore located in an old theatre. Yes Argentinian still read books. We have noticed many bookstores this week and they are full of people buying books. This theatre was huge all filled with books and people.Leggi altro