South America, Day 3: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Woke up around noon without any plan at all. Decided to wander in either direction down the street and see what I could find. Try #1: turn right. (All the pictures look hazy because it was incredibly humid today. It was like walking through fog the whole day)

Walking down Av de Mayo, I pretty quickly found myself in front of the Argentine Congress building, Congreso de la Nacion. It's pretty:

However, I was looking for the Plaza de Mayo, the central square of downtown BA and the focal point of political activism in Argentina, and apparently I'd gone the wrong way. Try #2: turn around. Maybe a mile down the road, I found what I was looking for, complete with large protest banners:

Banners in support of veterans of the Argentina-Britain war over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), I think.

Casa Rosada, with a symbol of the Bicentennial

 At one end of the Plaza lies the Casa Rosada (Pink House), the seat of the Argentine Presidency. It's quite nice on the outside. The ground floor of the inside has a gallery of Latin American patriots and freedom fighters. It's rather interesting to see the history presented from the other side - many of the pictured heroes are shown in a rather different light in US history. There were tours of the upstairs, but I skipped that in favor of heading down to San Telmo.

Every Sunday, the street Defensa, running north-south from the center through the San Telmo neighborhood, is shut off to car traffic for most of a mile for a giant street fair and flea market.

An outdoor parrilla, or grill restaurant

Booth specializing in antique cameras

And another with tons of copper containers, lanterns, and assorted metal junk.

Continuing down Defensa, I passed the end of the street fair and came upon Parque Lezama, which had a cool statue of the founder of Buenos Aires:

After exhausting all that Defensa had to offer me (sadly, I'm not much of a trinket purchaser), I headed back towards the Plaza de Mayo, but instead of going straight back, walked up a diagonal street towards an Argentine national monument, the Obelisco:

That having been seen, I headed back to the hostel. Not much terribly interesting in this part of Microcentro/Congreso, though...

Um, I guess the hotel next to this sign is uncomfortably expensive?

I escape Palo Alto, and find another Caffe del Doge?