Snowpea and my first visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina

Snowpea and I have landed in Buenos Aires! And here's a quick overview on what we've been up to m.

Do as the tourists does in BA

The first few days was spent walking around the city doing all the touristy stuff. The Obelisco is in the centre of the city on the Av. 9 de Julio, the widest avenue in the world. Each direction has 7 lanes, and in between there's also a dedicated bus lane, you can imagine how wide it is! It felt very daunting when I first saw it, how do I cross the road in time? So far I still haven't managed it one go, I always have to stop and wait in the bus lanes in the middle.

This is probably a must take photo in the city. When I showed my family, my sister had the exactly same one from her trip 14 years ago!

What lies beneath

If one didn't know, I could be standing in Buenos Aires and tell you I was in Europe somewhere, and you'll believe me. The city vibe here is so different from a few of the other south American cities I've been to. Many buildings have an air of grace and elegance, yet underneath this facade lies the economic challenges and social instability that the locals have to endure every day.

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San Telmo

There are many murals around the city, and the country's most famous son can be seen at many places. This is at San Telmo, a vibrant bohemian area in the city. The area is also famous for an eclectic mix of colonial style buildings, cobblestone streets, and street art. Even the film crew thinks it's an interesting filming location.

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El Ateneo

Many moons ago, when I was curating for the first generation of Worldmappin, I saw a post about the most beautiful bookshop in the world. That's when I first learnt about El Ateneo, a theatre turned book store. I made sure this was on my to go list, and it was breathtaking. The stage has been converted to a café and I could hear live music being played. I went up to the next two levels to get a birds eye view of the store, and it was quite surreal. It's amazing how things turn out in this world, and now I'm physically at a place that I curated years ago.

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Barrio Chino

Another place I went to during my stay in Buenos Aires is Chinatown. I like to try as many public transport as possible when I travel, and Chinatown was a little outside the city centre by subway and train. Plus, I'm always interested to check out how different Chinatown's have developed around the world. This was the only day that rained during my trip, so that was quite annoying, but luckily I had a good meal at Chinatown to make up for it.

Mini meet up

I always say the best thing about Hive is how I get to meet people that would not otherwise have been possible. Argentina is 11,000 km away from London but the distance doesn't stop online relationships developing into real life ones. I arranged to meet @lauramica when I was in town, and we met up for dinner, and then for breakfast again the next morning. We had a great time chatting about life both on and off chain.

For dinner, we went for asado, a barbeque that's very popular in Argentina. Laura gave me a cultural overview of the meal, the different kinds of meat and accompanied by the russian salad. This is a potato salad but Laura didn't why it's called a Russian salad. Apparently they have another dish called (I think) German crepe but Germans have never heard of it before. Maybe it's Argentine culture to name their dishes after other countries 😁

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Snowpea and I went to a few other places during our stay here and I'll be sharing more of that later on. In the meantime, we're off to our next destination and will be offline for a while. See you later.

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