La Boca and San Telmo neighborhoods

  This is our tour guide, Ceri making friends with a local street dog. He is an ex-pat from their UK (Ceri, not the dog!). He and his wife have made their home in BA for 8 years now. What an interesting guy! He and his wife worked at Cirque du Soleil and saved up enough to pay cash for their historic house in BA. He's very outgoing and knows practically everyone!

 We started in La Boca, a poor but colorful neighborhood. The locals are very proud of  their soccer team and the best players have a star on the "futball walk of fame". This one is Macri's - the current president of Argentina.

 

 

                                                                            Naturally, the Pope is a very big deal in Buenos Aires.

 We were in La Boca on a Sunday when they have their outdoor market. The buildings are so colorful because when the poor immigrants settled here, they couldn't afford paint for their houses, so they used leftover paint that ships gave to them.

                                                    These apparently are iconic buildings in La Boca. Notice the cat on a hot tin roof!

                                                     Unfortunately, this place was booked so we had to look elsewhere for accommodations.

 Next we went to San Telmo, another historic and colorful neighborhood. There were a lot of street performers. This used to be an affluent neighborhood until yellow fever sent people to higher ground, to a northern neighborhood called Recoleta. Luckily, the epidemic is over.

 The outdoor market in San Telmo is very popular! And it goes on like this for over a mile.

 

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 The architecture is beautiful. You can see the European influence. The doors are especially grand.

 

 Argentina is known for great steak - it was really good.

 Inside the Pope's cathedral.

This is a postscript to Patrice's post from last night. In case it wasn't obvious from the pictures, Cere really took us outside our comfort zone. We saw a side of BA most tourists would be reluctant to visit. And he kept us from wandering into some shantytowns even where even he wouldn't go. In so doing I think he put us in touch with the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of BA.  Cere really loves BA and it showed in the quality of his work as our guide.