2008 CIRCLE AROUND SOUTH AMERICA: 2/4/2008 Buenos Aires, Argentina

From: Sherman Rootberg
Date: Feb 4, 2008 5:11 PM
Subject: 2/4/2008

2/4/2008

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

We had to get up before breakfast again today, but I was already up at about 5:00 AM. The wind must have shifted during the night and the smell of burning garbage was filtering into our room. It smelled like most of the third world countries and the Far East. It was so bad I was having trouble breathing. What a great way to start your day in a new city in a new country. It did finally abate and I think I lived.

It turned out to be a bright sunny day. Our bus was well air

conditioned and the temperatures were moderate today. They can get as high as 110 or 115 we were told.

We were told we were to meet our tour bus at the tourist/customs building. We would have to take a shuttle bus to get there. Of course there were all the tour buses waiting at the bottom of the gang plank. Our tour department is still the pits. They get nothing right.

We did get a very nice young lady for a guide. She was very friendly, cheerful, knowledgeable, and best of all, she spoke perfect US English. Everyone was easily able to understand every word, except of course the English people.

Buenos Aires is a big city. We were told thirteen million people. I think that must include the surrounding areas. There were many high rise buildings but not nearly like New York or Chicago. The ones we did see looked very much like the ones we see in US cities.

In other countries, like Australia, many of the tall building were very foreign looking. They took us by the better and worse areas of the city but there had to be a lot we were not shown.

This is their summer and the traffic is supposed to be lighter. It was a mess and we barely moved. Almost everywhere we went there were sprawling parks and green everywhere we could see. Beautiful wide boulevards with flowering trees and manicured lawns and bushes. Even the very poor slum we were taken by was

swept clean of debris. While it was very nice, I am afraid It may have been a little too good to be true. What a great promotion job. I am sure 99% never even think about it, but where were all the schools? I never saw a grocery store. We saw lots of US fast food places but not one gas station. Where are the real places? The furniture stores, the hardware stores, clothing stores. Where were shopping malls for the non tourist junk? I think we been conned. We could not have been shown the real city.

We did see the downtown and most of their government buildings. The city started to be a real city in the seventeen hundreds but there are no buildings left from then. The early buildings had been made of brick that was not baked properly and crumbled. There were some very nice buildings from the eighteen hundreds though.

We saw their big cathedral with the mosaic tile floor from the seventeen hundreds. It was now only available for masses and

tourism as the old floors were starting to deteriorate. They were trying to redo some of the floors. In this Catholic church there was a section where Jewish artifacts were hung. In 1992 there had been bombings of Synagogues in Buenos Aires. This is where some artifacts from the Holocaust are being kept.

We saw the presidential palace. It is known as the Pink House, verses the White House in the US. We saw the balcony from where Avita spoke to the people. It was the same balcony used in the

movie where Madonna played her. Later we saw the cemetery where she was finally buried. Avita, not Madonna.

Upon returning to the ship we were told they could only take us one way, directly to or from the ship. They had to let us off in the customs/tourist building where we would have to take a shuttle back to the ship. We found the reason was because they had to march us by all the stores with highly overpriced junk inside the building.