Buenos Aires - February 3rd

After last night’s late finish, we are a bit late up this morning. But today we aren’t going to do too much, just go back into the centre of town to look at some of the other sights we didn’t see on our first day in there, and to go on a pub crawl (sort of).

We begin the day be seeking out a bookshop about halfway into town called El Ateno.  This bookshop is rated as the second most beautiful in the world (after one in Maastricht, and before one in Porto) so it is a sight itself.  And it is, set in an old theatre you could just stand and look at it rather than the books.  The bookshop sets the trend for a day of shopping, and another of the sights, the Gallerias Pacifico shopping centre.  Again this shopping centre is as much about the setting, in a former art museum, as about the shops.  It doesn’t deter Dorota from some shopping.

Between the beautiful shopping experiences we visit the bicentennial museum which shows the history of Argentina over the past 200 years, and I go to a number of other parks and statues to takes the photos we missed out on.  This included the former Torre de los Ingles (English Tower) which is now the Torre Monumental.  As we saw in the museum there is a big chip on their shoulder over the influence (read money, especially ownership of the meat businesses in the early part of the twentieth century) that the British have had in this country, culminating in the Falklands issue.

In the evening we go on our pub crawl, sort of.  We are eating in another Clare and Paul recommendation in town, called Filo.  This is conveniently around the corner from the Kilkenny Irish pub, so we have a pint there before.  Filo was OK, we ate vegetarian pasta and pizza (as we were still full of meat from the night before) but there was something wrong with their air conditioning, because it was too hot in there.  After we headed to another bar, this time a Polish bar called Krakow.  Having been in 9 Irish pubs in 7 countries on this trip (we doubled up in Vietnam and here in Argentina) it seemed only fair to go to the one Polish pub we have found on our travels.  And it was a pretty nice bar.  Dorota got talking, in Polish and Spanish, to a group of second generation Polish locals, and we had another pint before heading home.