Buenos Aires

March 5^th, 2024

We woke up to see the MSC Lyrica outside our window. When we had looked outside during the evening, a container ship was being loaded. She must have slipped away quietly during the night and her bright white replacement had arrived. So now there were Princess, MSC, Azamara, Holland America, and Oceania ships in port. It looked like it was going to be a busy day.

We have been to Buenos Aires several times before and have walked all over the city. Today we decided to take it easy and sightsee from one of the hop on hop off busses. There is a red line route, and a yellow line route. We decided that either route would do, we were just looking forward to seeing the city again.

We disembarked and took the shuttle to the cruise terminal. It was certainly very crowded there, and difficult to navigate our way through due to all the people milling around.

We were able to negotiate our way through the throngs of confused looking passengers to find that both of the bus lines had a kiosk in the terminal, and we were approached by a yellow line representative first, so they got our money.

I asked for directions to the bus stop, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that there was a stop right outside the cruise terminal building.

We were directed to the yellow bus and found great seats out of the sun on the upper level. Off to see Buenos Aires.

We plugged in our yellow earphones and sat back to listen to the commentary. There was no commentary, just music. It was the same on all of the language channels. Oh well, not what we expected, but the city was looking beautiful, with the jacaranda trees in bloom.

We arrived at our first stop. No one got on or off, so we just sat waiting for something to happen. Finally the driver announced that we all had to get off the bus, this was not what we expected. However, just behind our bus was another bus. Yay! This was our tour bus, the other one just took us to this bus stop. It all made sense, and we climbed on to the new bus, plugged in our earphones and off we went.

This time there was a commentary, although not always audible. It was a lovely sunny, warm day, perfect for a day of sightseeing. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city with wide tree lined boulevards, classic buildings, green parks, and statues, fountains, and sculptures everywhere.

On my first visit to Buenos Aires I had gone to the Recoleta Cemetery, to visit the family tomb of Eva Peron and see all the extravagant mausoleums and statues. The cemetery is totally amazing, and among the beautiful well kept mausoleums, there are the decaying ones that look like they may collapse at any moment. It was late in the day and getting dark. The cemetery was about to close and I was heading towards the exit, anxious in case I ended up spending the night there with its inhabitants. Suddenly as I walked past the broken gates of a decaying mausoleum a very large cat jumped out and landed on my head. I wasn’t quite sure what was happening, so I just started to scream. My screams must have pierced the whole neighborhood. Suddenly out of nowhere, I was surrounded by concerned onlookers. The cat in question was long gone, probably terrified by the screaming banshee, all I could do was point to my head and say “cat on my head!” A very kind lady escorted me out of the cemetery and pointed me in the direction of a bar.

I returned to the cemetery a few years later with Brian. This visit went without incident, but I thought I had better not push my luck. We did not get off the bus at the Recoleta stop.

We went past the Casa Rosada which is an amazing building, but every time I see it all I think about is Madonna singing on the balcony.

I love the Boca neighborhood for it’s brightly colored houses, wacky murals and whimsical nature.

Is this Messi and the Pope? Could be.

There are old buildings, and new buildings, but they all go very well together.

Finally we returned to the stop where we had joined the bus. We got off the bus and I asked the driver if this was where we could catch the bus back to the ship. It wasn’t. That was at a previous stop , and the bus to the cruise terminal wasn’t expected there for over an hour.

We decided that it was a lovely afternoon, and we would just walk back to the ship. It turned out to be a great idea after several hours sitting on a bus, and we were able to enjoy the beauty of the surrounding buildings and parks at our own pace.

Sail away was due for 5:30, but when we got back on board we found out it had been delayed until 8:30. The sail away party went on as planned however, and we headed up to the Dolphin pool to listen to the band. It was fun, with a lot of dancing, but not a champagne glass in sight.

Buenos Aires looked lovely in the fading light. Today has been a great start to our cruise.