Happy Holidays

The holidays are upon us and we are all busy celebrating. I hope everyone enjoys their time with friends and family this holiday season. Happy holidays and I will see you all in the New Year!!!

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Part II

La Boca is the most picturesque of all neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. By the late 1800´s it was the harbor of Buenos Aires. La Boca means “the mouth”, as it was the mouth of the river Riachuelo, consequently, it was the entrance of all vessels coming from Europe.

This extravagant zone is completely different from the old and the modern Buenos Aires. Romantic stories say that tango was born in La Boca, that prostitutes, mafia, sailors, immigrants lived there, giving a huge variety of personalities. At any time of day you will see Tango dancers on the streets and see them performing while you are eating in almost every restaurant.

A typical or even particular feature of La Boca is that all houses are full-color painted. The reason might be that the immigrants used the remaining paints found in the nearby docks to decorate their humble buildings, made of metal, with balconies

 

The famous 100-meter street “Caminito” (also the title of a typical argentine tango), is the soul of La Boca. A handcraft fair alongside Caminito during the week-ends and holidays is an odd offer for visitors.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Our next stop on the trip was magnificent Buenos Aires – the Paris of South America, the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after Greater São Paulo.
Buenos Aires is divided into many barrios, which means neighborhoods. Each one of them has something special to offer and has an important story that identifies the spirit and characteristics of its citizens.
I’d like to highlight just a few, which you cannot miss:

First of all it is the Center of the city with its famous Avenida 9 de Julio - the widest avenue in the world, running roughly 1 kilometer (0.62 mi). It has seven lanes running in each direction and is flanked on either side by parallel streets of three lanes each. Although we crossed it several times, it was a real challenge every time we did it!

Just a couple of blocks from our hotel was the Teatro Colón, the main opera house in Buenos Aires. Acoustically, this theater is considered to be amongst the five best concert venues in the world. We were lucky to get on the one hour guided tour to see this incredible famous Opera House. The tour is an hour long and is outstanding, well worth the price and the time it takes to tour through. It reminded us of the Opera Garnier in Paris. You won't find Chagall’s work in Teatro Colon, but there are allegorical ceiling frescoes painted by Raúl Soldi.

The next district not to be missed is Recoleta, a high class residential and commercial district and one of the most elegant neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. Recoleta is known as the Little Paris in Buenos Aires. Its French style residences, large gardens, squares, fashionable hotels, museums as well as the restaurants and cafes give this area a distinctive and special profile.

The Cemetery of Recoleta, founded in XIX century by the Recoletos (a religious order) is considered one of the most famous cemeteries in the world, similar to Pere Lachaise in Paris, or Arlington in Washington D.C. It's a virtual city of the dead. The famous and the infamous live in mini-mansions with doors and windows. They say that "it is easier to get into heaven than to get into Recoleta". They have a tomb here that cost over a million dollars. They have Evita (Peron); they have sad stories of premature burial. You can see the best of it with a tour guide.
In the heart of Recoleta is Floralis Generica. It is very huge aluminum and steel flower is positioned in the middle of a water feature in one of the green areas on United Nation square. The
petals of the flower open at sunrise and closes again at sunset.

 

150 meters away from this flower, across elegant Libertador Avenue, is the el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes -The National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA) of Argentina, which holds in its permanent collection priceless works of art by Argentine artists, as well as works by European masters such as Titian, Goya, Rembrandt, Gauguin, Pissarro, Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Degas… Unfortunately, we had only one hour for this Museum.

Puerto Madero, a contemporary neighborhood in Buenos Aires, with its reach history and luscious landscapes, deserves a special visit from you.
The history of Puerto Madero is fascinating, having originally been the main port of Buenos Aires, now Puerto Nuevo, moved for economical reasons and was left abandoned for over a century. In the 90s a magnificent renovation took place. The old red brick warehouses were refurbished into luxurious offices, residences, 5 stars hotels, banks, movies, restaurants and pubs. One of the most interesting places in this district is the Puente de la Mujer (Spanish for "Women's Bridge") - a rotating pedestrian bridge (to learn what is a rotating or swing bridge go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_bridge)
And of course, La Boca – the birthplace of Argentinean tango, but I will leave that for next time…

 

Iguazu Falls, Brazil - Argentina

The next place we visited on our trip to South America was Iguazu Fall.

 

The immensity of these falls makes it hard to describe. More than 240 individual falls are in a horseshoe shaped array fed by a river more than 2 km wide. The park has a trail system which enables you to view the falls from several places. There is also a boat ride that will give you a view that you'll remember. We were lucky to see Iguazu from both Brazilian and Argentinean sides. They are different, but both are worth seeing. A spectacular place – just look at couple of a hundred pictures we took! On November 11 of 2011, Iguazu Falls was announced as one of the seven winners of the New Seven Wonders of Nature by the New Seven Wonders of the World Foundation.

 

Another great experience was the visit to Triple Frontier -the tri-border region where the borders of 3 countries meet: Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. While there are many triple borders in the world, this in particular is formed naturally by the convergence of two rivers - the Parana River and the Iguassu River.

 At the convergence of the borders, each of the three bordering countries has erected an obelisk, painted in the national colors of the country in which it is located. We saw all three countries from the Argentine side, which is most accessible for tourists because this landmark is very close to the urban area of Puerto Iguazu, less than 2 km from the center. It is dated 1903 - year of the border treaty with Brazil.

I’d like to add that there are more than 150 tri-points around the world. If you are interested in learning about them, please go to http://twistedsifter.com/2012/05/famous-tripoints-around-the-world/.

Who knows, maybe you decided to visit one of them.