Buenos Aires Bike Tour

We had a super fun day yesterday on a city bike tour of Buenos Aires. The tour was 7 hours long and we trekked about 22 Km...mostly on bike lanes, which are quite extensive throughout the city.

 

We were originally supposed to do this on Friday, but due to the strike we changed it to Saturday...it worked out well because Friday's group would have been 12 people and we would be fighting with crazy BA traffic.
The Saturday group had 5 people me, Sue, a couple from Australia and a doctor from the US( who was sneaking a day trip in while he was here for a conference). It was a good group and we had a great day together.

We started in the neighbourhood of San Telmo in Lezama Park. Lezama Park is a public park and historians believe the park to have been the site of Spanish Conquistador Pedro de Mendoza's landing on what became the first, failed attempt to establish Buenos Aires in 1536.

 

We headed next to the colourful streets of La Boca, which is like a Little Italy.

La Boca is the most picturesque of all the neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires. By the late 1800´s it was the harbor of Buenos Aires. Here is where tango was born!
Corinna said it was originally a dance between men, as they dominated the population there, and eventually became a dance that was used by the poor and lower class. It was looked down upon by the upper class in Argentina until it spread to Europe and became popular.

La Boca means “the mouth”, as it was the mouth of the river Riachuelo and it was the entrance of all vessels coming from Europe. It was actually the first port and the place where all immigrants found their first shelter in Argentina.

Its famous 100 meters street “Caminito”, is the soul of La Boca. A handcraft fair alongside Caminito during the week-ends was going on as we arrived on a Saturday, there was a lot of energy there!

La Boca is famously the place another big attraction, which most visitors to Buenos Aires will want to see, the fútbol stadium known as “la bombonera”,which means chocolate box....home of the VERY popular soccer team La Boca juniors.

La Bombonera stadium

The newest area of Buenos Aires is called Puerto Madero.  It was built to be a port and took 10 years and tons of money.... only to find once it was completed, that technology had changed and it was too small to fit the newest vessels. It was literally abandoned for years.

The obsolete red brick warehouse buildings at the port were renovated in the 1990's and now house shops, cafes, parilla and other fine restaurants. It is the nicest area of Buenos Aires, the most expensive, the safest and home to all BA celebrities. The lofts are so pricy that most of them are left empty.

To cross to the other side of Puerto Madero you can take the Puente de la Mujere, the Women's Bridge .. a really pretty pedestrian swing bridge that spans the river. The other side of the river has more modern buildings and apartment blocks

The woman's bridge.

We travelled through a few more neighbourhood until we ended up at a super cool sculpture called the Floralis Generica. It was built in 2002 and is 23 meters high.
This flower used to act like a real flower and open during the and close at sunset with a red glow from inside. Unfortunately, it has been broken in the open position for some time and I guess there are no plans to fix it.

We ended the tour at the Casa Rosada.

On August 22, 1951 on the balcony of the presidential residence, Casa Rosada, Eva Peron would address the crowds of 200000 below! Hard to imagine so many people filling at square!

All in all, a great way to see Buenos Aires, one of our favourite day so far!

The weather wasn't epic...very windy and varied from cloudy to sunny as the clouds blew by...we all we pretty bundled up to stay warm. No rain though so we were happy!

We saw so many things we never would have and covered a lot of ground! The guide, Corinna, was awesome and we learned tons of history and interesting info about the city.