Since it’s after midnight now, yesterday was my third whole day in Buenos Aires. It seems completely unnecessary to say that this city is absolutely incredible and beautiful, except that it is even more so than I had expected. I still am very happy about spending the next year in Chile but am really looking forward to living here after that year. Waking up after the first night that I was here I met the people that I have been hanging out with since; an expatriate from Missouri, an ex-soldier from Israel, a German girl, and an Argentine girl. All of them are really cool people. The hostel itself is really cool and in an ideal location, in the Microcentro, or basically the downtown.

The first thing that we did was go to the Sunday fair in San Telmo, which occupies this one street for several kilometers along with a few squares. This was pretty cool. Otherwise, during the nights we’ve either been going out or playing cards while drinking wine. Certainly fun but not too exciting, but what more can you expect during the middle of the week? During the last two days I’ve been walking around the city getting to know it and taking pictures. Otherwise, I’ve been eating pretty well and healthily. I’m trying to eat five or six small meals during the day, which I did more or less successfully for the first time today, and I did notice that I felt better and more energetic than usual. I also started jogging today down at Puerto Madero next to the ecological reserve, which I plan on doing every evening here.

I’ve taken a lot of photos so far but almost all of them are of buildings. Here are some of the better ones. I’m dividing these photos by neighborhood, and I’ll try to add the names and locations to the buildings later that I don’t know now. I’m probably wrong about putting some of these building within certain neighborhoods that are near the borders. But what can I do?

The Microcentro is the downtown of the city, or the financial district. There are a couple of nice pedestrian malls here and a lot of shopping and stuff.

The Obelisk, which is one of Buenos Aires’ defining landmarks, is here, on the intersection of two of the cities main roads, one of which is supposed to be the widest in the world.

View at dusk from Avenida 9 de Julio, the widest road in the world

This is a view of the obelisk from Plaza de Mayo

The variety of architecture in the city is really amazing.

A residence in Plaza Lavalle

I believe that this is on the same plaza

Also on the same plaza, I believe this is the national theater, or at least just a theater

This is a cool, old school theater

This is one of the pedestrian malls at night. Galerias Pacifico which you see in this photo is  most beautiful mall that I have ever seen. I thought I was cool, and I hate malls.

A view of the mall from the inside

This is the mural on the dome at the mall’s center

This is el cabildo, or like the town tall, on Plaza de Mayo

La Casa Rosada, also on the same plaza. This is the Argentine white house. Obviously it’s under renovation in this photo, as are a ton of the other older buildings here right now. Madonna actually convinced the old President of Argentina, Carlos Menem (major neoliberal sellout, to let her use the balcony for that musical Evita. After that, Menem presided over the economic collapse of the country.

Another view view of la Casa Rosada…

Some massive building, I think i­t is an apartment building, that stands almost on its own between the Microcentro and Puerto Madero

The same building during the day

This Correos, or the post office, on Plaza Roma, in between el microcentro and Puerto Madero
This is also in Plaza Roma.

No, this is not Missouri, it’s on the Rio Plata.

I’m not sure what this building is, but it’s cool.

This is El Torre de los Ingleses. I really like the tower behind it also.

Puerto Madero is the old port for Buenos Aires, which now has been completely gentrified and must cost a mint to live in. It does have a really nice atmosphere though.

There is a modern bridge that cuts through the middle of Puerto Madero.

What is really cool is that it turns on it’s axis like so to allow boats to pass.

There are two old ships docked here. The other is bigger and cooler looking.

I think this thing is like an events center, resaurant, nightclub of sorts called Opera Bay. Yes, it’s named that because it looks like the Sydney Opera House.

They’re constructing a lot of condos on the far side of the port.
All of the old warehouses have been converted to mixed commercial and residential. I’m not sure what the use of these wooden things hanging from the windows is but I like them.

La Boca is one of the neighborhoods that was originally populated by immigrants, and tango has its origins here. It is really poor now and pretty run down except for a couple of streets that are completely overpopulated with tourists. The poorer areas have really old and cool looking buildings in decay, and the poorest areas have the same old and cool building pretty much falling apart with shanties build all around them. It certainly puts a face on the economic collapse as well as the economic disparity here. It’s supposed to be really dangerous here, especially at night, though I felt safe walking through these neighborhoods. Since I was by myself I thought it would be stupid to have my camera out though, which is why I don’t have any pictures of this here.

This is Caminito, the entrance to the tourist trap here and the birthplace of tango

El Caminito as well…

This is the side of Estadio Boca Juniors, which is home to one of the more popular futb0l teams here in Argentina.

A cool apartment building here in a reasonably decent area.

A pedestrian ferry across La Boca.

So there are quite a few more pics that I have taken. If you care to see them the complete set is on flickr here

I’ll be headed to some new neighborhoods and doing some other things in the next couple of days and I’ll try keep this thing updated. My friends that I’ve met and I are planning on ice skating tomorrow somewhere out in the Province, which here basically means outside of the city limits since the city exists within a rather large province of the same name.