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The city
which inspired outstanding personalities such as Cortázar,
Borges, and Gardel is not located within Buenos Aires Province
now, nor is it its capital but is instead an autonomous federal
district. Geographically speaking, Buenos Aires province lies on
eastern Argentina, to the south of the Paraná River and
southeast of the Río de la Plata which forms the border with
Uruguay. It extends westward from the Atlantic Ocean to include
the major part of the humid Argentine Pampas, a vast,
grass-covered plain.
The province,
which surrounds the federal district and city of Buenos Aires,
includes also the historic Martín García Island. The largest and
most populated of the provinces, it is the cultural and economic
center of Argentina. One main river, the Salado, crosses the
province from the northwest to the southeast for as long as 360
miles (580 km). In the south, two low mountain ranges, the
Sierra del Tandil and the Sierra de la Ventana, extend inland
from the coast in northwesterly directions.
Buenos Aires is
not only the financial center but also Argentina’s most
important port. The Autonomous City of the Government of Buenos
Aires, as it is officially referred to, is surrounded by Buenos
Aires industrial belt conurbation or Conourbano Bonaerense and
Rio de la Plata and is divided in 47 neighborhoods, named sea
neighborhoods. The Federal Capital has more than 3,000,000
inhabitants and together with its metropolitan area reaches up
to more than 16,000,000 people. The City of Buenos Aires is a
metropolitan cosmopolitan and modern center of a clear cut
European style. Every day hundredths thousands of people
circulate its avenues and highways.
Across the Rio de
la Plata or as English speaks call it, River Plate, you can find
yourself in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. It only takes a
45 minute-flight or two hours and a half by ship. One of the
peculiar characteristics of Buenos Aires is its amazing and
entertaining night life. Bars, coffee shops, (cafés),
restaurants, pubs, discotheques and all types of dance-floors
remain open until dawn.
Itinerary (meals included as indicated)
DAY 1
Arrival to Buenos Aires city. Welcome and transfer to
the chosen hotel, check in. The evening is at leisure. Overnight
staying.
DAY 2
After breakfast, you will enjoy our first half-day
guided panoramic City Tour, including Palermo Park, La Recoleta,
a stop at Evita Peron’s Tomb, La Boca (Caminito St.) & San Telmo
neighborhoods. You will also visit Plaza de Mayo, the grand
boulevard of Buenos Aires with its many remarkable buildings and
architecture, including Cabildo (the town hall), Casa Rosada
(government’s headquarters; place where Peron and Evita used
when speaking to the multitude form the balconies), the
Cathedral, a fantastic work of religious architecture, and the
last resting place of Argentina’s independence hero, General San
Martin. Return to the Hotel. The afternoon is at leisure for
shopping or enjoying your stay. Overnight staying.
DAY 3
Breakfast. Shopping Tour to Unicenter Mall (the biggest
in Buenos Aires), we give you some discount tickets and a buffet
- lunch is included at the Jumbo restaurant (drinks are not
included). Return to the hotel to enjoy your free time.
Overnight staying.
DAY 4
Breakfast. Check out and transfer to the airport.
City Tour
Discover the beauty and charm of
Buenos Aires and its wide avenue, 9 de Julio, where you can have
the pleasure of admiring the architecture of the metropolitan
Opera House (Teatro Colón) and the Obelisk monolith. Going
south, you will come across the civic and historical center and
its mythical Plaza de Mayo right across you will see the pink
Government House (Casa Rosada), The Metropolitan Cathedral and
The Cabildo, former congress construction. You can also walk
around the old neighborhood of San Telmo, where you can enjoy
its Flea Market on Sundays. Flanking it you can visit, the
picturesque neighborhood La Boca, where the first Italian
immigrants arrived in the second half of the XIX century; famous
area due to its chocolate box and colorful architecture and its
main street Caminito. Buenos Aires was born and grew within a
locked relationship to its role as a port city which evolved in
time as South American commercial hub and one of the world’s
most important financial centers. Now the luxury of its past has
returned in yet another area of the big city: Puerto Madero. It
is yet under construction but it is worth to be discovered as it
is becoming a high class international bon vivant region.
Assembly rooms, bakeries, bazaars, body care saloons, car
dealers, clothing, furniture Drugstores, real estate, and
decoration mix in a perfect Feng Shui with all the other high
quality shops like ice cream shops, hair and beauty shops,
restaurants, fast foods, resto-bars, resto-shows, veterinary
and many others. This gives you the impression of entering in
another city. It is chiefly an area dedicated to executive,
commercial, financial and institutional rendezvous at national,
regional and urban scale in the highest degree of diversity,
complementing with residential and leisure activities. Then you
can visit Retiro, next you can go to Palermo a residential area
surrounded by French style parks and buildings. In the end, you
will visit Recoleta. At the back of La Recoleta church, towards
Pueyrredón Avenue, took place the corrals, slaughter houses and
the cart roads off north; this caused a population of river-side
men, laborers and thugs which lodged in the "pulperías"
(canteens). They say that Tango was born in this atmosphere, in
the middle of tenancies and bars, danced in the Armenonville of
Libertador and Taglestreet in 1888; later, also, in the Palais
de Glace. Nowadays, the district of Recoleta is considered not
only a site of deep historical interest but also the most
glamorous neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Within a short walking
distance you can discover several cultural museums and centers,
parks, fairs, museums, bars and restaurants of excellence and
Barrio Norte one of the most exclusive areas together with
Puerto Madero. In Buenos Aires, you will certainly feel walking
down the streets of a leading world capital whether you come
across a famous film director rolling a movie such as Francis
Ford Coppola or buy at its elegant boutiques, excellent
restaurants and outdoor coffee shops.
A little bit of the times
gone by
The city of Buenos Aires was first established as Ciudad de
Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre which literally means
"City of Our Lady Saint Mary of the Fair Winds") on February
2nd, 1536 by a Spanish expedition led by the spaniard Don Pedro
de Mendoza. The city founded by Mendoza was located in what is
today the San Telmo district of Buenos Aires, south of the city
center. The ancient settlers of this district were the Querandí
people. The name Querandí was given by the Guaraní people, as
they would consume animal fat in their daily diet. Physically,
the Querandí Indians as well as the Comechingones in Cordoba,
another province of Argentina, would reveal a beautiful,
well-balanced body. They were tall and extremely belligerent.
They would wear leather clothes, similar to a fur blanket; women
would also wear a kilt that reached their bodies down to their
knees. With a partially sedentary lifestyle, they would group
their leather camps by winter water supply conditions, and they
would set off on their their raids inland in the summer.
However the people that live in the beautiful Buenos Aires City
today have almost nothing in common with these aborigines. Today
people of various cultures, languages and ethnic varieties, have
mixed as the result of long complex historical processes that
includes large Nordic immigration currents and Southern European
and Northern European immigration waves. When you read the name
of subway stations you may feel intrigued to find neighborhood
names like Banfield, or Temperley or Hurlingham as these were
named after the famous engineers who worked on the railroads in
the city, in the province and throughout the rest of the country
when the administration back then brought the Englishmen to
build the railway network in Argentina. |
