Weekend market, San Telmo Buenos Aires

San Telmo, Buenos Aires

Every sunday is a huge market along the Defensa street in the San Telmo area. All kinde of market stalls sell all kine of things. The origin of the market is on the Plaza Dorego, the heart and origin of the market. You can buy antiques and watch the professionals performing argentinian tango. This is the place to be on sunday!

INFINIT, Palermo - Buenos Aires

infinit.la
Thames 1602, Palermo - Buenos Aires
Armenia 1636, Palermo - Buenos Aires

INFINIT is a label with beautiful sunnies and optical glasses all hand made. In Palermo they have two different shops with a similar range. Not only the glasses are worth a visit also the store is a feast for the eyes!
They have stores in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Italy, Peru Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Spain.

MISHKA, Palermo / San Telmo - Buenos Aires

El Salvador 4673, Palermo - Buenos Aires
Balcarce 1011, San Telmo - Buenos Aires

MISHKA is a label that makes very modern stylish women shoes and clothes. I just love it! <3

La Fundamental, San Telmo - Buenos Aires

Pasaje Giuffra 370, San Telmo 

In the center of San Telmo you find this ultimate hat shop. They have classics like the original panama or classical argentinean hat as well vintage and fancy unique models. Most of them are hand made and of very high quality but still affordable.

The shop is open everyday from 1pm to 7pm except wednesday and saturday. 

PAUL, Palermo - Buenos Aires

pauldeco.com
Gorriti 4865, Palermo - Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires has so many beautiful shops and boutiques, espacaly in the Palermo and San Telmo district. So I decided to post a selection of my personal highlights and start with PAUL.
PAUL Franch Gallery is a beautiful home decor shop in the middle of Palermo. They sell furniture, decoration articles, soaps, wine, cloths, accessories and other things you just easily fall in love with. Just a nice place to get some inspiration!

Iguazu Falls (03.04.2014 - 07.04.2014)

We spent way too much time in Puerto Iguazu, nobody told us you can easily visit both sides of the falls in one day. But the main reason was our hostel odyssee.
The first place had bedbugs, which we luckily saw before it was too late. Firtst time in one year of travel... But the room they offered us in replacement was so dirty we still left the other day. The next place had only space for one night but we were too exhausted and didn't care. Therefore we had to switch again the other day.

On the Argentinian side they have a little train to bring the masses up to the devils throat. If you hurry a bit you can leave the crowd behind on the one kilometre walkway to the edge of the fall. We had the platform almost to our self till the masses arrived and we fled ;)
The place is more about feeling the enormous water masses crashing down than for the view (too much spray) or pictures (too much spray). Wet and happy we headed back to have a look at the rest of the many falls broken up by greenery before taking the bus back into town.

The other day we took a cab to the Brazilian side. From this side you start to realize how big the whole thing is as you have a perfect full front view of the falls. If you want to take pictures this is the place to go. Sadly the ways where quite narrow and every time somebody stopped to take a picture everything came to a standstill.
The highlight was again a walkway and platform built out to the edge to have a view of the devils throat from below.

On both sides there where extra boat, kanu and even helicopter tours available which we skipped, not worth the crazy price in my opinion...

As we we had a cab, the most convenient option in terms of border control, we could make a stop at he duty free center between Brazil and Argentina. It had some nice stuff, but lugging it around till we get home wasn't feasible so left empty handed.

Next stop Paraguay!

View from Brazil

Buenos Aires, again ;) (27.03.2014 - 03.04.2014)

We spent another week in Buenos Aires, this time not doing and visiting much. More relaxing, sleeping in, cooking our own meals, playing video games (yay ^^), reading and not doing much else.

But the time flew and we had to board our flight which took us up north to the triangle of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.

Travelling latin america, a little statistic

loading...

Buenos Aires (13.03.2014 - 20.03.2014)

For our week in Buenos Aires we rented a flat over AirBnB. We had a lovely apartment in the middle of the Palermo district, famous for its many little shops, boutiques, restaurants, bars and cafes. No crisis here as far I could tell from the prices!

As with every city trip we ended up walking quite some distances which my new 8$ shoes weren't really up to...

• Strolled through the Sunday market in San Telmo, having everything from silly souvenirs to junk and antiques
• Visited the prison museum about the different penal institutions in Argentina, imaging passing your sentence in the old days down in Ushuaia, brrrr!
• Saw the huge Recoleta cemetery, but missed the grave of Eva Peron ;)
• Watched the tango dancers in the street
• Walked around Retiro
• Spent hours shopping in Palermo, at least the shops here have comfy seats for waiting boyfriends!

Because we where running out of cash we decided to hop over to Uruguay before heading to the Iguazu waterfalls. So we boarded the ferry to Colonia del Sacramento and left Argentina behind us for now.

Over there!

Blue Market

Because of the financial situation in Argentina you can get a better exchange rate on the street than the official rate issued by the government. This so called blue market operates in a kind of grey area. Officially it isn't allowed but the police turns a blind eye to it. We've seen arbolitos (literally little trees) shouting for cambio (exchange) in front of policemen.
There are different websites and twitter accounts which inform about the daily blue rate, even local newspapers print it next to the official one!

All this started after the peso lost a lot of its value as a consequence of the poor economy. People being afraid of loosing their savings started frantically buying USD. This led the government to rationing the amount of dollars a person can obtain to prevent the drain of money "out of the country".
Lately the government tried to defuse the situation by allowing argentinians to have a bank account in dollars. For this account they can buy certain amount of dollars at the official rate but have to pay a 30% tax the moment they withdraw it (other people told me this tax expires after one year).

After our debacle in Venezuela we came prepared to Argentina. We had a fair amount of peso chileno and dollars to exchange.
As the golden times (at least for us foreigners where we would get twice the amount on the blue market) are over we ended up exchanging our money the tourist way on Calle Florida.
What we didn't know before is that you get better rates for higher denominations. Which means bills of 50 and 100 USD would fetch close to the price advertised. Everywhere else in the world it is a hassle to cash in bills higher than 20$ so we didn't bring any. We still got 10.50 per dollar when the price on twitter was at 10.90 and the official rate was at 7.90.
There are some misprinted new 100 Peso bills in circulation which certain places don't accept, so make sure you get old ones or know how to spot them!

PRO TIP: Bring big dollar bills to Argentina!

Abandoned

All over Palermo are these abandoned cars which rust and rot.

Happy Birtday to me

If you wonder what we did last saturday ;)

Witnessed the premier of the latest music clip of INDICA.

Próximo Recuerdo - INDICA from Judith Schwyter on Vimeo.

INDICAoficial.bandcamp.com

Mendoza (10.03.2014 - 13.03.2014)

We passed the first day in Mendoza strolling around the city on its many tree lined avenues. Then we hurried home so we wouldn't miss the daily hostel happy hour free wine ;). All the travellers met in the backyard and we exchanged stories long into the night.

The next day we headed off (with a slight hangover) to visit two wineries and a olive oil factory. The first stop was quite a contrast to the wine yard we've visited in Chile. Multiple times bigger and everything is automated and industrialised. Our guide showed us every aspect of the production, from the delivery of the grapes, over the pressing and storage to the bottling and labelling. As we are right in the harvest season many trucks lined up to get weighted and deliver their cargo. Afterwards we got some lessons how to do a proper wine tasting: swirling, smelling, examine the tears on the glass, etc ;)
We got to try two of their wines and one of their champagne before our bus took us to the next destination.
The guide in the olive oil factory showed us all the equipment needed to press and filter the oil. Part of the tour then was to try their different oils and various dried fruits they have on sale. Melanie of course bought a huge bag of dried tomatoes ;)
Last stop for the day was at a much smaller winery again. It wasn't as pretty and not as friendly as the first one. We weren't allowed to take pictures of most of the places o_O
Back at the hostel they had a big argentinian asado ready and everybody was seated on one huge table enjoying the meat and wine! Thats what I've been looking forward to in all these months of pollo fritto con frijoles ;)

To get to Buenos Aires the other day we booked a night bus again. This time with Chevallier, whose bus was quite shabby and had no service at all...

37500l of wine!

Bariloche, Suiza Argentina (06.03.2014 - 09.03.2014)

Our bus took us up north again before heading east through the national park to the frontier. 

We had heard the expression Switzerland of Argentina before, but where still quite surprised to find a town with many wood and stone buildings bordering a nice lake surrounded by mountains and woods. The big surprise though where the many shops selling chocolate and the restaurants offering cheese fondue o_O 

You can also tell from the names of towns and streets that one or two Swiss citizen has left his mark. Nearby is the town of Colonia Suiza, with streets as Zürich or Canton Valais. 

Because of its touristy nature the prices where even higher than in Chile and the main street consist mainly of outdoor, chocolate or gift shops. 

Instead of booking an expensive tour we took the bus and headed to Parque Municipal Lla Llao. We strolled around the lakeside which remembered me a lot of Canada or the wilder parts of back home.

For the overnight bus ride up north we booked a cama-seat with CATA. We had comfy wide seat, including a hot meal with wine and champagne! 15 hours later we arrived relaxed in the Malbec paradise.

The main plaza