We had 7 hours to explore another area of Buenos Aires before leaving for the airport, to fly to Sao Paulo, for the first leg our journey home.
We stayed overnight in an IBIS Styles hotel and learnt that IBIS is the acronym for Imagine Being Inside the Show. This explained some of the décor and building features. To greet guests at the entrance is a brightly painted Bull dog. The stairs to get to the first floor, where Reception, the Dining Room and the Pub are located, are a beautiful modern design and the music, played pleasantly softly, was from various live shows. It all appeared very tasteful.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said for our room which was nothing like as advertised. It did have 2 beds, a TV and good WiFi facilities but the bathroom had no basin – that was outside of the bathroom in the entrance hall. The towels were on a shelf on the opposite side of the entrance hall as there were no rails or hooks in the bathroom. The advert said that it had a dining area which turned out to be a long table, attached to the wall, on which the TV and telephone stood and there was only one chair in this double room. The bedside lights proved to be a challenge. To turn them on, one pressed on the globe but to turn them off was not so simple. We tried pressing the globe, turning the arm around and pressing on the rubber disc which held it to the wall. After about 15 minutes, Trevor went down to Reception as they didn’t understand our query over the phone. It turned out that “to turn it off just give it a little shake.” Really!!??
After breakfast the next morning, we left our luggage at Reception and went on a walk of discovery which had been recommended by the staff. Down the hill, about a mile away was the Plaza de Correo, or Mail Square. We decided to go down to this Plaza first and make our way around to the Plaza de Mayo or May Square. This is called Mail Square because the main building on the Square was built to be the Central Post Office of Argentina. It was inaugurated on 28 September 1928. It was declared a National Monument in 1997 due to its architectural quality, historical importance and the works of art found inside. It ceased to be a post office in 2002 and today it is the Kirchner Cultural Centre. The Square was a beautiful place to walk around with a lot of statues but, sadly, many had had the bronze name plates removed and others, the information had worn away. One of the statues Juana Azurduy Juana Azurduy de Padilla was a Bolivian and Argentine independence hero who fought alongside her husband Manuel Ascencio Padilla.
From there we began to walk up the hill past the Presidential Palace, a very large pink building in which Eva Peron had lived, into Plaza de Mayo. It is the main foundational site of Buenos Aires formed in 1884 in the city centre. Its origins, however, can be traced back to Juan de Garay’s foundation of Buenos Aires itself, in 1580. It goes by the name of May Square in remembrance of the 1811 May Revolution which started the process for Argentina’s independence from Spain in 1816. At the 1st anniversary of May Square, the Piràmide de Mayo or May Pyramid was inaugurated in the centre of the Square and was the city’s first national monument. The Square has been the site of many demonstrations and protests over the years, of which the two most prominent are: 17 October 1945 a trade union group forced the release from prison of Juan Domingo Perón and then on 16 June 1955 the Square was bombed during one of Perón’s rallies. There were other statues and a beautiful fountain in the Square, so we sat on a bench to eat our lunch and enjoy the serenity of it all.
As our taxi was due to collect us at 15:00 to take us to the airport so we decided to return to the hotel, but we had wandered so much it took us some time to decide on which road to follow. In looking for this we saw some beautiful buildings and an interesting statue, Roque Saenz Pena Monument in Ciraco Ortiz Square much smaller than either of the other two squares.
Suddenly, as we rounded a corner, a group of guards came marching along the pavement outside the Basilica where Pope Francis had been a Cardinal. Back where we had been 3 weeks ago. A bit more walking around and we finally saw a street that we recognised as the one in which the hotel was situated.
We had time for a cup of coffee before the taxi arrived on time. When the booking was made the hotel claimed to be 20minutes from the airport but on arrival it took nearly an hour to get there from the airport so, when we were repeating this timing we weren’t concerned. When we got to the check-in counter we were told that we were at the incorrect airport! What?!! We were told that there was a shuttle bus but it would only leave in half an hour and we didn’t have that much time. We found a taxi driver who promised to have us at the other airport on time to check-in and he did, just 10 minutes to spare. The irritating thing was that we drove right past our hotel on the way to the second airport and it was just 20 minutes between them.
Even with these irritations, our trip back to South Africa via Sao Paulo to Cape Town and on to Durban went without a hitch. That signified the end of a truly wonderful experience. We hope that you have enjoyed it through these blogs.
