Hello all,
First of all I would like to wish my wonderful grandparents a happy 66th wedding anniversary! Have a great day, miss and love you both every day!!! Maria and Courtney say happy anniversary too :) I took a picture of us Skyping the other week so I've attached that too!
Last night we had our tour meeting. We've gone from being a tour made up of mostly Aussies to a tour if mostly German speakers! Lots of Swiss, a few German and one Austrian. One girl from England, one from the USA (Maria, my roommate!) and then me, Molly, Hayley, Emma (from the other tours) and two Aussie guys. So there you go!! Everyone seems really nice.
Joined the others for dinner but Courtney and I left early and went to the movies. Successfully ordered our tickets and were surprised to only pay $5 Aussie! The cinema was small and very steep, and there was only one ad! Enjoyed 'Taken 3' a lot, it was good! Then we said goodbye to Anthony.
This morning our new guide, Daryl (who used to live in Melbourne!) took some of the others on a three hour walking tour, but as we had already seen lots of the places they were walking, Courtney and I went exploring alone. We caught a taxi to La Bomboñera, the stadium of the famous club here called Boca Juniors, who Maradona used to play for! We had a look around the museum (which had no English, but was info about the players and achievements). Then we went on a tour, which was a million Spanish speakers, a French couple and us. Our guide was so friendly and would explain everything in Spanish and then happily explain it all in English to us! We learned that the club was formed in 1905 by five friends. At this time the team had nowhere to play so played at various grounds until 1920 when this stadium was built! Their initial colour was just blue, but another team in BA had the same colours. How to solve such a dilemma?! Play a match of course. La Boca lost so had to change, and the five founders waited at the nearby port and said whichever boat sailed in next, they would adopt the colours of their national flag. The next boat was a Swedish one so there colours are blue and yellow!
We walked around the various stands. My favourite one we stopped in was where the crazy fanatics stand. No seats, just concrete to stand and jump around! They're above the visitors' change rooms, so they jump up and down to make noise and give them a pre match headache! She got us to jump around and shout. The noise echoed heaps, imagine when full with 50,000 doing the same! At one point on tour the guide went around asking where people were from and which football team they barracked for. I got a lot of blank stares when I held up my Collingwood cap!!! Haha.
Then we got to tour through the media area and change rooms. Courtney isn't really into sport but even she enjoyed it!! Well worth it.
Then we went and checked out the coloured houses again - looked even better today due to beautiful blue skies! It was STINKING hot today! I bought a picture and then we sat and had lunch in the main street. Was a bit expensive but part of it is to pay for the experience. There were tango dancers, music and people everywhere
Afterwards we walked through the southern suburbs; La Boca and San Telmo! We saw Plaza Dorrego which looked a lot like Montmartre in Paris. After this our legs gave out so we gave them a well deserved rest and caught a taxi to plaza de Mayo, then went to the Bicentennial Museum.
Everything in here was in Spanish...so what did we do? Used the free wifi to google translate everything!! Haha. The museum was free and was built underground amongst the ruins of the old customs building in 2010 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the May Revolution against the Spanish. We read about this, independence and Peronism. Turns out people didn't like Eva as much as I thought yesterday. The poor liked her, but the rich hated her, calling her a selfish whore! After her death, Juan Peron lost even more popularity and was eventually overthrown in a coup in 1955 due to inflation and his oppressive rule.
We then walked through the financial district back to the hotel and are now chilling out. The newbies are going to the same tango show we did two days ago, so a Court and I are spending our last night together watching TV - 'Pretty Little Liars' and 'Arrow' come at me!! Really going to miss Courtney. I can't believe that day in Lima where we happened to run into each other in reception was over five weeks ago. It's been really great getting to know her :)
I have absolutely loved Buenos Aires and Argentina, but tomorrow we are off to Uruguay! For me this is a bit of a milestone as it's my 40th country I've been to. Thank you Nan and Pa for inspiring me to travel when I was little, when I was at high school I always told myself I would go to 50 countries before I was 25, and I'm now well on my way! I've decided to celebrate my 40th country by going to go to a soccer match in Montevideo on Valentine's Day (there are four on!) - who needs a boy when you've got sport hey?!?
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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