Bye, bye Oosterdam.  Bye, bye awesome cabin.  Bye, bye sweet staff!  Time to make a change.  We delay as long as we can to disembark, simply because we can’t check into the hotel until 2.  But finally we can wait no longer and off we go to the luggage area where chaos reins supreme!  The bags are simple enough to find and grab, but the line to get through customs is wrapping around itself.  MSC is also disembarking, and the combination of 6000+ people trying to get through the doors is just too much to handle.  The security officers finally open a side door and just start shooing people out that way – we don’t even have to pass through customs! 

But then – did I already say chaos?  Oh, we ain’t seen nothing yet! 

Because we came out the side door, we are now in cross traffic hell. The buses for the ship are in front of us, but still lots of passengers with bags are streaming out the other door to get to buses, while we are battling up stream to get to the area where we can wait for our driver.   And it is just total madness!  Plus the fact that we are early means we have to sort of position ourselves of to the side and take expeditions out into the melee to see if someone has a sign with our name. Meanwhile thousands of confused passengers are streaming past, or jostling past I should say, looking for their rides.  Crazy.  The true meaning of Quilumbo! But thank God for WhatsApp, because we are communicating with the car service the whole time and they are telling us the driver is coming and asking what we are wearing so he can find us easier.  The driver finally arrives, collects us and takes us to the car. Then it is a really quick little drive over to the Sileo apartments where we will spend our one night in Buenos Aires.

Checking in is easy, we give the desk clerk all the info and she takes our bags and we are off for a day of exploration! 

Heading toward the Japanese Garden, we walk through a series of parks, passing the Monument to Bartolome Mitre, the first president of a unified Argentina, and further along, the Evita monument, which is completely fenced off an inaccessible – photos through the fence are the only option. 

At the corner where we turn to go to the gardens is a statue of Carlos Tejedor, the governor of Buenos Aires in 1878 and an important figure in the unification of Buenos Aires into Argentina (although not always in a positive way).  It is a wonderful statue, but we’ve no idea why the woman is there at the bottom looking up at Tejedor.  Oh well.  Some things will remain a mystery.

Arriving at the gardens, the entrance fee is super cheap and we wander through the different areas, all so beautiful and perfectly Japanese.  We are particularly interested in the guys in the lagoon who are literally raking the lilypads to contain them, putting all the raked debris on a big float to dispose of later.  Ok, well, we are easily entertained.

Anyhow, we spend a good amount of time here, just wandering enjoying the weather and the gardens. Stopping for a cappuccino, which is out of a machine and more expensive by a lot than the entrance fee, we reconnoiter the rest of our day.

On the way out, we stop in a temporary exhibit of great origami made figures in frames.  They are beautiful and there are women sitting around the perimeter of the room making more.  That would be a fun thing to learn!

Back on the streets, we give up on walking further into the parks, and head straight to the Evita museum, which is located in a house that Fundacion Eva Peron bought as Hogar de Transito (temporary home), a shelter for women and children without resources.  Evita inaugurated the home in 1948, and 50 years after her death, her her grandniece inaugurated it as the Evita Museum.  The house has various displays (no photos) about her life, chronicling her young life, her acting career (which I had forgotten), her charitable giving – which was immeasurable – her social change movements, everything about her amazing, but short life.  Very informative and interesting couple of hours.

Now it is time for lunch, and we have a restaurant all picked out. It is about a 10 minute walk from the museum, but once there we find that they are just setting up.  We thought they opened at noon and it is now way past that, but the guy I ask says an hour or so (I think that’s what he says!) so now we are off on hunt.  We finally settle on Fabiano Café, a little café with outdoor tables and a menu that seems to have everything from breakfast to sandwiches to Milanesa to these weird little appetizer things called bohios (we have no idea what they are), Sembuzak (sesame empanadita), Knishes, Keppe, a bizarre mix of food but perfect for us to pick at.  Ed orders the Milanese, and I try the Sembuzak plus a bohio with cheese and vegetables – hey, why not?  What comes out is like this weird little biscuit with melted cheese and sauteed vegetables inside – which is quite yummy, and the Sembuzak is excellent, as the Milanesa.  Great lunch all around.

By now we figure once we head back to the hotel the room should be ready, so we end up just going straight there and not bothering with the rest of our planned route!  And we are in luck, our penthouse room is ready – and what a room!  We’re only sorry we are only here for one night.  It is a fabulously huge room with a sitting and dining area separated from the bedroom area by a wall with a TV that can swivel to either room.  A huge bathroom and full kitchen – but the best is the huge balcony overlooking the Recoleta cemetery.  The views!  The best!  This will be where we will spend all our time, for sure!

After a bit of relaxing on the balcony, we go explore the neighborhood around the cemetery looking for a place to eat, passing through a park with this dog….that looks like a live mop! Then onto the other side of the cemetery where we were just here with Howard yesterday, so we have a pretty good idea of where most of the restaurants are and just want to wander to peruse all the menus.  We actually end up going to the place we thought we would before we even started walking, 70 30 Beer House. But of course!  We had see the sign on the restaurant yesterday while in the cemetery and we can see it from our balcony, so why not?

We have a great table outside, plenty of menu options and a full bar meaning…yes…wine!  It’s a perfect meal of empanadas – one ossobuco, one bondiola (pulled pork) and crispy chicken strips.  Absolute perfection! Then of course, you know what we did – spent the rest of the evening out on the balcony enjoying the cool air and the fantastic view of the cemetery at night. Excellent day in B.A. and tomorrow we are onto our wonderful little Quest.  Can’t wait.