Exploring Buenos Aires
When we arrive in a new city, Jon and I love to just start walking and see where the sidewalks take us. It’s a great way to feel the vibe where we are staying and it’s fun to discover whatever surprises we happen to stumble upon. Buenos Aires felt different than we expected right off the bat. “Where are we going?” “What are we doing?” “I’m hungry.” “I don’t waaannnnt to waaaaallkkk aaannyyymmooooorree.” Clearly, the kids will need to adapt to our approach.
Many thanks to Lisa R. for our coordinating family adventure shirts.
Tired from the flight, traveling with our packs, walking around the city, and all of the first day excitement, we envisioned it would be easy to fall asleep and wake up rested on the local schedule. Well, that was definitely not the outcome.
From the unscientific data we’ve collected, most of us in the US assume South America is directly below us, but in actuality, it is almost entirely east of North America. Our continents of the Western Hemisphere would be more accurately named Northwest America and Southeast America. Anyway, Buenos Aires is 3 hours ahead of the central time zone of the US. We assumed that would be no problem, but as the kids fought bedtime again on the second night, even after dragging them along more than 8 miles of city walking, we understood we were wrong. Luckily, on day 3 we remembered we had brought melatonin and consequently enjoyed the quiet of an early bedtime and long slumber.
We settled in the barrio of Recoleta in Buenos Aires. Due to its location being within walking distance to many of the sights we wanted to see as well as the Spanish Academy we planned to attend our first week, it turned out to be a very nice, quiet, and convenient area to stay. Once there, we discovered Recoleta is known as the elegant neighborhood of Buenos Aires. As if we weren’t already going to stick out, we got some laughs as we tried to follow the tango dance instructions cast into the sidewalk.
Our first apartment had one bedroom with two double Murphy beds in the main living area for the kids and a small balcony at the front. The balcony was key for our outside loving kids. They spent a lot of time on the balcony playing house, singing, and being locked out while we cooked.
From our first day here: taking taxis from the airport, meeting with our AirBnB host, stopping at a local street cafe, and shopping for groceries, we realized quickly that we needed every bit of our Spanish language skills plus much more. English as a second language is not nearly as popular here as some other travel locations, so knowing at least some basic Spanish is essential in Buenos Aires.
We had anticipated that a good foundation in Spanish would be crucial for our months of travel through South and Central America and scheduled some intensive Spanish lessons for our first week in Buenos Aires. Vamos Spanish Academy worked with us to provide private lessons, a class for the adults and a separate class for all of our kids. The instructors were outstanding and taught us more than your straight up Spanish curriculum. Shortly into our first Spanish class we picked up on some nuances to the local Spanish dialect, Rioplatense. One difference is that they pronounce the ‘y’ and double ‘ll’ with a ‘sh’ sound. For example, “yo” and “ellas (eh-yahs)” is pronounced “sh-oh” and “eh-shahs” instead. There are other nuances in the Rioplatense dialect that required us to code switch our ears in our daily communication. Altogether, the Vamos Spanish classes were invaluable and we are glad we dedicated the time to enhancing our Spanish skills in our first week.
We still have a long way to go, but we are generally able to stumble through our day-to-day interactions. The people of Argentina have been very patient with us and we are grateful for that. We are trying to listen on the streets, read every sign we see, watch tv in Spanish, and quiz each other to keep the learning going. Hopefully we will all get that clicking moment sooner than later.
On our first complete day in Buenos Aires, we went on an 8.5 mile hike around the city center starting with a visit to Plaza Mayo (“Mah-sho”). The Plaza Mayo is akin to the US’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue where the population has the opportunity to demonstrate and express their concerns to the President of Argentina, whose formal office is in the adjacent Casa Rosada (Pink House). On the day we visited the Plaza Mayo, there was no activity; however, the remnants of what we believe had been protests for access to Covid vaccinations by the general population were displayed on the Monument to Jose de San Martin, the celebrated liberator of South America from Spain. Makeshift memorials left by the families and friends of those who had passed away from Covid still remain within the glass walls of the monument.
We followed our visit of the Plaza Mayo with a walk around the Puente de la Mujer, a revitalized waterfront area in Buenos Aires. By this point, the kids were balking from the heat and distance that we had walked up to this point. Our focus became finding our best leverage to keep the kids hiking, popsicles!
On our hikes through Buenos Aires, we found that green space in the form of plazas and playgrounds are never too far apart from each other. It seems like a great way for the city residents to step away from their apartments and to relax under a tree or to meet their friends and neighbors. The playgrounds gave the kids a chance to burn off extra energy, a welcome respite to Lauren and me as we took in the breathtaking landscapes, like the sprawling rubber tree in the middle of Plaza Vicente López y Planes in the photo gallery below.
To give the children a good feeling about traveling and the year to come, we wanted to ease their transition by making their first week as fun as possible. Knowing we would need to figure out essentials - getting money, shopping for groceries, figuring out local transport, learning to communicate in Spanish, etc., we tailored most of the extra activities around the interests of the kids. In reality, this will be a common thread throughout the year, but we thought it especially important this first week while we were asking for so much change from them. We had already booked our Spanish classes for 3 hours every morning of the first week, so this left the afternoons for kid-centric and hopefully kid energy-draining activities.
The first thing we took them to was the Museo de los Niños. Before leaving St. Louis, they had been asking to go to the Magic House non-stop, and we found this very similar. However, the Magic House is definitely lacking a giant toilet for these turds!
The next day’s surprise was a trip to the movie theater. Encanto was the movie and Spanish was the language. With our pochoclo (popcorn! You get the choice of salty or sweet here.) and Fanta, we put our Spanish skills to the test. It didn’t seem to bother them, but after the movie they did request to watch the movie again in English to better understand and confirm their interpretation of the story.
After Spanish class on day 4, we stopped by a bookstore. The El Ateneo Grand Splendid was a theater in its previous life and is now the most marvelous bookstore we have ever encountered. The photographs do not give justice to the view of the main concert hall from the center balcony.
On the way to our next adventure, we took a much longer detour than expected meandering through the Recoleta Cemetery. The cemetery appears to be a mini city of its own with tightly adjacent rows of ornate mausoleums along series of narrow alleyways. The mausoleums are in various states of repair, but a story could be had from each of them. Recoleta Cemetery has the reputation for being primarily the resting place of the well-to-dos of Buenos Aires dating back to the early 1800s. Each mausoleum is unique and tells the story of a member of the family with some having dedications from the deceased’s friends and affiliations. One of the cemetery’s most notable residents is Eva Peron, a.k.a. Evita, the beloved former first lady of Argentina that worked toward labor rights and women’s issues in Argentina, and whose life was tragically cut short by cancer at the age of 33. We easily spent over an hour exploring the cemetery and studying the intricate sculptures and could have spent much more time had there not been another stop planned for the day.
With the remaining hours we had in our last night in Recoleta, we made it to the Participatory Science Museum, where their slogan is “prohibido NO tocar” meaning “forbidden NOT to touch.”. This spot was a double whammy as it was both a ton of fun and full of homeschool credit and inspiration with various science and engineering exhibits. We spent multiple hours playing in the museum despite half of it being closed to renovation! It reminded us of the COSI (Center of Science and Industry Museum) in Columbus, Ohio, but on a different scale. It was so much fun that we forgot to take pictures.
This takes us through the first week of our adventure. In our next post, we will be talking about our visit to Tigre. If Buenos Aires is the Paris of South America, some may say that Tigre is the Venice of Argentina.