A collage of the ‘Paris of the South’

I thought I’d just post a collage of photographs of Buenos Aires, without too much ‘chat’.

The yellow bus is a Hop on Hop off bus, worth the money even if it is only used to get around from one photo opportunity to another.

Part of the main square of the city – Plaza de Mayo

Still within the square

Don Quixote at the intersection of Avenida de Mayo and Avenida 9 de Julio, it was a gift from Spain in 1980.

A small area of Avenida 9 de Julio

Cafe Torton, which is a famous cafe that opened in 1858.

In the UK I had a hobby of painting 20 mm metal soldiers and I recreated quite a lot of the Battle of Waterloo – I gave everything away when we emigrated . . .  :- (

I took the above picture, during a visit to a Sunday market. I was tempted to buy a small squad . .  but didn’t.

Rhodochrosite is the national gem stone of Argentina, and all of the above jewellery is made from this stone – this stall is one of the market stalls.

Rhodochrosite

The above reminded me of Penang – bottom right shows the covers of a few of the market stalls.

I was impressed with many of the wide clear streets.

Which one is John, is the far one Ringo, that’s not Paul surly . . .

I just liked the building – no idea of any details.

A beautiful day – National Congress Building

Different – I wonder if the lawn is on the roof . . .

A distant shot that I had to crop – the Russian Orthodox church, opened in 1904. There are about 170,000 Russians or of Russian decent, living in Argentina.

The hop on hop off bus drove through this new area of the city , which appeared to have as much heart as that of a dead lettuce – boring.

A major shopping street

No idea what this building is called, I just liked the look of it , so I took the photograph.

Clicked this one because I liked how the old is reflected in the new . . .

If you are going to have a demo have a big one – workers marching because they can not find work.

Different colours for different unions (I think).

For all the shouting and drum beating it was quite peaceful – but we didn’t hang around – just in case things changed.

I saw this and thought that’s for me  . . but Maureen disagreed  . . .

We stopped on a corner and began to study our maps, when this policeman approached and asked if he could help. We didn’t realise, but we had stopped outside the Israeli embassy, and he was an Argentinian guard protecting the embassy.
His English was excellent, so what started as request for directions ended up as a long conversation of places that we and the guard had visited overseas, and life in general. A perfect gentleman and a credit to Argentina, for his consideration of ‘lost’ tourists.

He never took his eyes off the area around the embassy, even when he was chatting to us. Note the bullet proof vest, and he had a carbine and a pistol on his hip. He made one feel quite safe.

This is a sort of cathedral I suppose . . .

It is the ceiling of a shopping centre.

Fountain and coffee bar

Maureen and I stood near the information desk and we looked up at the ceiling area, which I think was the base of an escalator, it was very highly polished copper.

I took a photograph of us reflected in the copper – you can see us near the top of the picture. I have the camera pointing at the ‘ceiling’ so what you see in the photograph is of our reflection.

I rotated another picture of just me taking my own picture in the copper ‘mirror’ – I’m on the left. I rotated the original picture horizontally before posting.

The only way to end a spot of site seeing . . .