A coffee at Cafe Tortoni [YQrtw Day 71 Jun 17]

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

There is a long weekend this week in Argentina. Our school will also be closed from Thursday to Sunday. To replace our lessons, we were required to come to school one hour earlier.

One hour earlier sounds easy. Just 60 minutes earlier than the usual routine, right?

Well, my usual routine is waking up 2 hours before class and taking my time with my breakfast and reading. However, I couldn’t bear waking up at 7am when the sky was still dark and the air cold so I woke up at 7:30am.

The sky was still dark and the air cold. I was sure I had woken up some of my roommates when I fumbled with taking my things for the shower and for school.

Living right across the street from school has its perks, I arrived with only 10 minutes to spare before class.

We had a new teacher and a new classmate from Holland. Our 4-hour class was great since we got to talk a lot but all the new information needs time to be absorbed. Let me give that 2 years.

Trip to Cafe Tortoni

Our after school activity today was a trip to the oldest cafe in Buenos Aires–Cafe Tortoni. Before heading there, we sat in class and listened to a Tango song about the cafe and the famous people who visited there.

We were supposed to ask the waiters questions about the cafe when we reach there. I managed to ask only for the Wi-Fi password because I’m such a noob. Boo hoo.

Still, we learnt that the cafe’s entrance wasn’t at Avenida de Mayo as the road wasn’t built when the cafe first opened. Instead, the back of the cafe was the entrance.

The cafe is pretty. One part of the ceiling had stained glass while the walls are decorated with donated paintings.

Still, I find a cafe most useful when the coffee is large and I can read for an hour without being disturbed.

After our trip to cafe, it was free time. I headed to Carrefour, where the security guard knows me by sight, to buy something for the night’s dinner.

That something turned out to be a midsized cabbage. All the other leafy greens were either rotting or looking fresh and expensive in a plastic bags.

Unfortunately, the cabbage was really tough. I’ve sliced it into small slices but it tasted like chewing through paper.

The vegetable also lacked the usual sweetness I find in cabbages. Are winter vegetables exceptionally bad?

The night was spent drinking more honey lemon to prevent any cold that might want to visit.

The night has become really cold, my fingers are numb as I type in the kitchen. I hope I am able to find the remote control later so I can turn up the heater in my room.

Oh, I have a bunk mate now. Hope that my climbing in and out of bed won’t wake her up in the middle of the night. (Actually, deep down I hope she moves out sooner than I do.)

Have a good week, folks!

Day trip to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay [YQrtw Day 70 Jun 16]

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay

I woke up at 6:45am today to prepare for my ferry to Colonia del Sacramento which required me to check in starting 8:00am. I was kind of excited to head to Uruguay because I could get a new stamp in my passport as well as have my Argentinian visa extended.

The hostel receptionist helped with calling a cab while I tried to gobble a medialunas. Medialunas is a Argentinian croissant. Unfortunately, the one served at my hostel is usually slimy and cold so I do not have a very good impression of it.

The taxi fare from the hostel to the port was cheaper than I thought. It was only 37 pesos after the phone booking charge.

The streets were empty at 7:30am and the only taxis I saw were all heading to the port.

The port for Colonia Express was in front of the casino. I’ve seen advertisements for the casino on a large screen in the middle of the city. It showed a rather ridiculous ad of a man winning loads of money and marrying Lady Luck who just happened to walk in while he was gambling.

Quick immigration process

The immigration process at the port was really fast. First you go to a counter where the Argentinian officer stamp your exit stamp. Then the passport is passed to the person in the next cubicle who happens to be an immigration officer from Uruguay.

The Uruguay officer didn’t even asked where I was staying and I was the proud owner of an entry stamp for Uruguay.

Before we were able to head to the immigration counter, we had to scan our luggage. The customs officer had a rather sweet looking golden retriever with him. The dog looked mostly bored with his tongue lolling out.

The dog had to sniff at all sorts of different luggage. My water bottle was repeatedly waved in front of the dog, as if it might contain something dangerous.

Unlike the ferry I was on in Greece, the boat was rather small. All the seats were taken and I sat with a family of three.

During most of the journey, I was napping with my mouth open. Oops.

Pretty little Colonia

The sky was gray and the clouds looked swollen when our ferry arrived at Colonia. Worst thing was that the town was next to the sea so the wind was very cold.

Luckily, the town was so pretty that I didn’t mind being outside.

Abandoned building wasting away gracefully with a veil of vines.

This wall of green and red leaves looked like it popped out of some story book.

There seems to be a lot of unused vintage cars in Colonia.

This car even has a plant growing inside.

Random stuff in Colonia

Most of the shops at Colonia were closed. I couldn’t figure out where the museums were so I walked into random streets.

Even though the place looked deserted, I felt rather safe and was (kind of) sure that no one would pop out of nowhere and mug me.

I love the painting on this Uruguay 200 pesos.

I was lured into a restaurant for an expensive cup of not so good coffee with milk. I sat there for more than an hour reading to take advantage of their heating.

I also tried to se if the ATMs in Colonia could give me US dollars. I seemed to have terrible luck as all of them said U$, and not US$.

I chanced upon the tourist information center, was given a map and walked around in the center to look at the rather small exhbition.

I couldn’t have a nice lunch since the bad coffee ate up about half of my Uruguay money. But I did have a rather good sandwich with a sausage in it.

At about 2pm, the sky looked like it might rain any time so I head back to the port to do what I do best…reading.

The immigration process in Colonia was the same as in Buenos Aires with two immigration officer sitting side-by-side. I read a little more before the ferry was about to leave.

When we got back to Buenos Aires, it was really dark. The guy at the taxi stand recommended those who were heading to the city center to take the bus instead of wait for a taxi that might take about 20 minutes.

Since the port was in the “bad” part of La Boca, I trailed one of the ladies who asked about buses. She led me to the right street and I eventually found the right bus back. I still had to take a short subway ride back since I wasn’t sure of the bus would stop in front of my hostel.

Still, all is well and I was not mugged. Three cheers to that!

Where have you recently been to for a day trip? Share your comments below.

Preparing for my visa run/ Streets of Buenos Aires [YQrtw Day 69 Jun 15]

[I wrote this yesterday but forgot to click on Publish. Doh]

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

This is the first time during the entire trip that I’m conscious that it is a weekend. Usually everyday jumbles up together since I do not have a routine separating the weekdays from the weekends.

Today, I planned to finish at least 2 days of revision in the morning. Sadly, I had to deal with printing my documents for the US visa application and that took up half of the morning.

I spent another half of the morning reading up on Veelas in the Harry Potter world (I’m now at GoF!) which led to more useless web surfing.

In the morning, I also booked ferry tickets to Colonia del Scaramento, Uruguay, for my very first visa run.

Wait, YQ, you can’t just drop new vocabulary like that into your post and expect us to Google it.That’s just lazy.

Probably not how the Argentina-Uruguay ferry looks like

OK OK, I’ll explain. Long term travellers do visa run to extend the length of their visa. The do this visiting another country and coming back to the country of their choice in a short period of time.

Take me for an example, when I arrived in Argentina, the immigration officer gave me a 30-day visa. (I seriously thought it was 90 days. Damn you VisaHQ.)

That 30 day deadline is coming up in 2 week’s time and I will become an illegal alien if I overstay.

However, since I’m applying for a US visa, I suspect that my passport would be kept with the US embassy for at least a week since next Thursday and Friday are public holidays. If I have terrible luck, I might even overstay.

So to extend my visa, I will visit Uruguay. I will get an exit stamp at the Argentine side and a new entry stamp when I come back in the evening.

Thankfully my visa run is just a ferry ride away. I’ve read horror stories such as Juno from Runaway Juno who had to do a 573km visa run.

After concluding my affairs of the morning, I decided to take a walk and visit the second hand book stores my teacher told us about.

Streets of Buenos Aires

Luckily, Ave Corrientes, where the bookshops are, is very near the hostel. I only had to walk about 3 blocks to get there.

Along the way, I snapped a few photos so you can see how Buenos Aires looks like.

Head's up on Buenos Aires's street — Head’s up on Buenos Aires’s street

I spotted this map of Westeros but I do not think the story universe actually looks this neat.

Poked fun by a jerk

I browsed through one of the second hand bookstores. It didn’t look like the usual second hand bookstores crammed with books from top to bottom shelf. Instead, the books were arranged in stacks on tables.

There were a lot of interesting books around. I was tempted to get a Book of Myths for Children which had Greek legends but 22 pesos wasn’t something I wanted to spare.

At last, I found a Sweet Valley Twin book. I’m more attached to the Sweet Valley High series but that book was only 3 pesos so I bought it.

At the cashier, I made a language mistake by saying, “Good.” when the cashier said, “Good day.” The other person at the cash register was unkind and asked his friend repeatedly if he asked “Good day” and laughed.

I was rather upset about that. When I left the shop, I kept imagining that I knew enough Spanish to retort, “Well, at least I’m learning another language. What about you?”

Alas, I do not know that much Spanish.

On Ave Corrientes, Ave 9 de Julio

Enough complaining, let’s get back to sightseeing Buenos Aires.

Newstand. I'm very scandalized that they display X-rated books publicly here. Mostly they have covers of half naked women with large breasts. — Newstand. I’m very scandalized that they display X-rated books publicly here. Mostly they have covers of half naked women with large breasts.

From the poster, Camila looks like a scandalously good show.

See that big poster of an Argentinine flag and the pope? It's from the city, to celebrate Papa Francesco's new job. — See that big poster of an Argentinine flag and the pope? It’s from the city, to celebrate Papa Francesco’s new job.

Dinner was another nice meal of home cooked steak with mushrooms. It’s strange that the mushrooms were more expensive than my two rather large pieces of beef.

How was your weekend?

Caturday: Give a cat a rod

Location: Istanbul, Turkey

Give a man a fish and you feed him for for a day. Give a man a rod and the cat will feed on the catch.

This fat cat was spotted lounging at the pier of Eminou. Unlike the rest, it wasn’t hunting in the fish buckets but waiting for its prey to appear at the end of the fishing rod.

School trip to MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires) [YQrtw Day 68 Jun 14]

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

I finally managed to pass the Candy Crush level that I was stuck for about 2 months. This morning, I was stuck at another level and I left the hostel for school a bit later. In the process, I forgot to put on a jacket and was assaulted by the bitter winter wind.

The last day of class for the week was a bit more relaxed. Even though I do not feel “TGIF!”, it’s great to take a break so I can catch up on my revisions.

[Memo to self, memorize numbers, important verb conjugations and write a few lines of composition during the weekend.]

After school activity today was a visit to the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires. I’ve not visited any museums in Buenos Aires, which is strange since I love museums.

In front of MALBA is a system with lights of three different colors. I thought that it was just some fancy art installation in front of the museums.

Macarena, you know her from previous school trips, explained that the lights show if there are too many cars on the road.

When we were going into the exhibition, there was a bit of confusion at the ticket counter. The museum insisted that all of us needed to have student IDs to pay student price even though there was a school letter. Out of spite, I did use my *wink* student ID *wink* and the price was 16 pesos (32 pesos for full price).

Interestingly, those with “Samsung Smartphones” can get two tickets for the price of one. It’s because Samsung’s one of the sponsors, or something. This was the one of the times I wish I own a Samsung instead of an Apple.

Art Moderno

Since the museum is about Latin American art, all the pieces were modern looking. This contrasted with the museums in Europe where many of the works were around the Renaissance period.

Even though the works were modern, some of them were dated from 1926 so we can’t really call them modern.

Macarena asked us to tell what we thought the paintings were about. I’m glad to report that I was able to talk about the paintings in more words than gestures.

Out of all the works, I was most impressed with Diego Rivera’s Retrato de Ramón Gómez de la Serna (Portrait of Ramón Gómez de la Serna). Even though Ramón Gómez is a good guy, I felt the potrait showed something like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Diego Rivera, Retrato de Ramón Gómez de la Serna (Portrait of Ramón Gómez de la Serna),

Diego’s partner Frida is also exhibited.

My most favorite piece was this cheerful work: Rafael Barrada’s Quiosco de Canaletas (Kiosk in Canaletas). There’s something about the blue that catches my attention.

I stayed on to look around at the museum while some of the others left. I was disappointed to find that only the first floor was exhibiting while the rest were closed.

Back to the hostel

Luckily, there was Wi-Fi at the museum and I found the route back to the hostel. I spotted a bus stop with buses going to Plaza Constitution. What I didn’t realize until I got down at Constitution was that I needed to go to Congressio, not Constitution.

When I arrived at the wrong destination, I had to walk back about 20 blocks to get back to the hostel. The sky was almost dark when I reached my elevator at about 6pm.

Dinner was a satisfying porridge of potato soup with spinach. The hostel mate who gave me rice yesterday gave me a whole bowl of leftover rice which I dumped into my soup.

I have a bad photo of my porridge so I’ll leave it to your imagination.

Until next time!

Who is your favorite Latin American painter?

Lamuko’s Lokanta: A delightful Japanese restaurant in Pamukkale

Is it still Friday at where you are living? Welcome to YQtravelling’s FoodFriday. The day I show off some of the lovely eats I had while travelling.
Today we’re going to Pamukkale in Turkey for some Japanese food.
Itadakimasu!

While in Pamukkale, I found out through Foursquare that there was Japanese restaurant–Lamuko no Lokanta–near the hotel which we were staying at.

My mom who was not used to Turkish food said we must visit the place so we had dinner one night. The food was so good that we went on the second day just for its desserts.

Lamuko no Lokanta

Lamuko's Lokanta in Pamukkale — Lamuko’s Lokanta in Pamukkale

Lamuko no Lokanta, or Lamuko’s Lokata, is run by a Japanese lady. From my eavesdropping, I found out that her name wasn’t Lamuko as the shop name suggests but was Noriko.

Outside of the shop, you will see a banner with photos of different Japanese food. The sign in Japanese advises people who are not customers not to take photo of the banner, but why it was in Japanese was a mystery.

The restaurant looks like the front yard of someone’s house but with a few tables out for guests. The eating space is cosy with about 6 tables that can sit about 4 to 6 people each.

There is also a small section of Turkish seats.

Turkish seats at Lamuko's Lokanta — Turkish seats at Lamuko’s Lokanta

What’s most amazing about the setting is the grape vine ceiling.

When we were there in end-May, the grapes were just growing. It would be amazing if the grapes were ripe and everyone could pick them off their vines.

Lamuko no Lokanta’s menu

Since this is not a post about the setting of Lamuko, I’ll get on talking about the food.

The restaurant’s menu is decorated in the Japanese-cute style with little speech bubbles above hand drawn animals.

Lamuko's Lokanta cute menu — Lamuko’s Lokanta cute menu

Apart from Japanese meals, the menu includes Turkish food and simple western dishes such as spaghetti.

The pasta section warned that spaghetti is a dish everyone must avoid in Turkey, but it’s ok to order it at Lamuko’s because they cook it nicely. (Mom did order a spaghetti Bolognese at another place. It was too squish and quite gross.)

On the menu, the ginger chicken rice bowl is the most popular dish. Mom got this for dinner.

The chicken was fragrant and did taste of ginger. Mom even felt that the rice serving was too much.

For me, I ordered an omurice. I absolutely adore omurice, going to the extend of travelling to an omurice speciality restaurant in Tokyo.

The omurice was alright at Lamuko. The egg omelette blanketed the tomato sauce rice, instead of the usual egg wrapping. It was tasty enough that I finished the whole thing.

While we were eating, the owner brought over a plate of dark cherries. This turns out to be a complimentary dessert. Yums.

After our meal, we ordered Today’s Desserts. It was a banana cake. Mom’s favorite cake is banana cake so she happily ate it.

When we went back the next day, Today’s Desserts was still banana cake but we ordered it anyway because we loved it so much.

We sipped apple tea at the restaurant. It was 1.50 lira each, a reasonable price compared with other restaurants.

Modelling Clay, the dog

When we were dining at night, a large golden lab came in. It picked up a squished mineral water bottle and brought it to me and my mom.

Even though it showed big puppy dog eyes, mom and I were not dog people so we only gave it sad glances and ignored the bottle.

The owner called the dog “Nendou”, which means “modelling clay” in Japanese. That is just the most adorable name for a dog.

Where was the strangest place you have eaten Japanese food?

It’s steak time! [YQrtw Day 67 Jun 13]

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

After my having steak and champagne mistake, I thought I should stop going out to eat steaks. The problem is, Argentina is famous for steak.

So what’s the next best thing? Cooking my own steak.

Wednesday and Thursdays are cheap meat days at the nearby Carrefour. They gave me a discount coupon with a value 30% of the price of the meat I bought today. I guess this means I’ll have steak again soon with the coupon.

Cooking steak in a hostel kitchen is easy

When I bought the meat, the three pieces in the A$20 (S$5) pack didn’t look that much. But it looked a lot bigger as I seasoned them with salt. A dorm mate even asked, “Are you having all three now?” Indeed, I am.

I cooked them in batches since the frying pan was a little too tiny to host all three of the meat. They turned out medium rare and were bleeding profusely when I sat them for 10 minutes.

Eating steak in a hostel kitchen is even easier

While it was great stuffing my face with steak, the cut that I bought wasn’t that tasty. (Do you think I’ll admit that my cooking is bad. Of course not.)

Next time, I’ll buy a better cut and see how it goes.

Until next meal!

Have you cooked in a hostel before? What’s your best dish?

Chinese food by weight in Buenos Aires [YQrtw Day 66 Jun 12]

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Today was one of the most uneventful day of my time in Buenos Aires. The school didn’t have any after school activities and I had to finish my transit visa application for the US.

Even though it was the third day of Spanish class, it felt like I’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s probably because having 3-hour lessons at a go isn’t very healthy but time does fly when we’re in class.

After class, I popped into one of the supposed “All-You-Can-Eat” places. It turned out to be a Chinese place and sold food by weight.

I picked some of the lighter food: chicken parts with less bones, squid and fried rice. This whole plastic bowl of food was for A$22 (~S$5.50).

It’s not that cheap when compared to Chinese food back home. But here in Argentina where a cheap steak meal would set you back A$45, it’s kind of a miracle that you can find something filling at this price.

The side dishes were quite alright and were quite authentic Chinese cooking. However, the fried rice was a little on the tough side. Maybe Argentinians are more used to not fully cooked rice.

After lunch, I continued filling in the online form for my US visa. There were pages and pages of spaces to fill in. My page kept logging itself out, claiming I had not saved the form for 20 minutes. I had to clear my cache before everything went back to normal.

After I had done the online form, there was still payment of my US$160 visa fee. It was either a choice of paying by cash at the branches of two different banks or paying by credit card.

The only catch for the credit card payment was that it required a 20% charge on top of the transaction due to some rule set by the Argentinian government.

So that makes paying by cash the only option for me. By the time I was done, it was past 3:30pm. I hurriedly packed my things, hoping that I could find one of the Rapigogo branches and pay my fee fast.

Off to pay my visa fee

I set the bank on my Google Map and went off to find it. I assumed that it would be a large bank but it turned out to be something that was smaller than a post office.

At that time, I didn’t have the A$880+ on me. I was terrified of being robbed so I didn’t want to withdraw money before I know where the bank was.

Unfortunately, all the ATMs I went to that were near the Rapigogo branch couldn’t give me the money I want. I decided that I would make the payment tomorrow.

On my way back, I got a few groceries from Carrefour, including two cans of cheap corn in cream. The can turned out to be a hell lot more cream than corn.

Dinner was still brocolli soup but with a can of terrible corn. I also learned the hard way that I should not wash pasta before cooking it. (I assumed it was like rice and need a good rinse.)

How was your day? Did you have good soup?

Tango lesson and show in Buenos Aires [YQrtw Day 65 Jun 11]

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

[This is Part II of Jun 11. In Part I, I went to La Boca.]

The receptionist at the hostel convinced me to go to a tango lesson and show as it was “cheap Tuesday”.

Everything was A$320 (~S$80), including transportation to and from the hostel, one lesson, a 3-course meal, unlimited drinks and a good show.

My heart did bleed a little when I handed over my A$320. That’s one third of the maximum amount I can withdraw from the ATM at a go. This meant that I will probably need to visit the ATM soon.

My classmate C joined the lesson + show as well, signing up with my hostel. She heard that her hostel was selling a similar package but at A$500.

Pick up to Complejo Tango

My receptionist said the shuttle bus would come at 6:45pm to pick us up. It wasn’t until well past 7pm that the bus actually came.

The bus was half full with very excited girls. Where are all the boys?? [I overheard in my dorm the next day that the guys went to a lesson/show with more guys than girls. Maybe I should have signed up for that.]

When we reached Complejo Tango, we were all sheparded onto a narrow staircase and went one floor up to reach the medium-sized dance studio.

It took a while for the rest of the people to come and for the class to start. Our instructor was Alejandro, a name I will never forget because of Lady Gaga.

Since there were more females than males, some girls had to go to the boy’s side to learn their steps. I manage to hide away at the girl’s side because the boy’s supposed to lead.

Our lesson was short and sweet with lots of footwork. In between, we had to find partners to dance and it was rather awkward. Still, it was a nice break from all the sightseeing and Spanish learning.

Food

After our class, it was dinner time. Our tables were set in a hall that had a stage in the center, against the wall.

I shared a table with my classmates, dorm mates and a lady from Sydney. Our table wasn’t very near the stage but it was a nice distance.

For my three-course meal, I chose empanada for appetizer, steak cooked raw for my main and a creme caramel for dessert.

Since it was a all-you-can-drink, the waitress plonked down three bottles of wine to be shared about the five of us.

The meal was good, although my steak could use a bit more searing to get the fat crispy. (Oh, crispy fat on steak…)

The show started after the main and before dessert…

The show must go on

Surprisingly, there were storylines to the show. In the first one, a man–our instructor Alejandro–kept stabbing the wall where his shadow was. Then his pals came out.

The three of them did a “manly” tango that reminded me of a VideoJug instructional video.

The ladies did come out in the end and that’s when the show got exciting. One of the ladies looked very much like Melisandre with the same sexy red dress but hair that is more copper than red.

In between the storylined dances, an elderly man would pop up and sing. He would then disappear and appear in the storyline as The Elderly Gentleman with Great Seduction Skills, or something like that.

The length of the show was great. It didn’t feel too long or too short.

Around the end, some of the girls were drunk on their all-you-can-drink and were very boisterous. They continued being happily loud on the shuttle bus back.

I would recommend going for tango lesson + show as this if you don’t dance. It’s a great way to learn a bit about the dance and you get a certificate at the end.

Have you seen a tango show? Which part did you like best?

Visit to the colorful La Boca [YQrtw Day 65 Jun 11]

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

This morning, I had my first taste of dulce de leche. I had been avoiding it because it came in a box that didn’t look very sanitary.

But I decided to give it a try after Macarena said a restaurant serves very good dulce de leche pasty.

Dulce de leche is a jam-like substance that is muddy brown but tastes of milky caramel. It’s quite nice as a bread spread but between you and I, kaya is much better.

After breakfast, off to Spanish school I went.

Class went well, we learned how to talk about the weather which is very useful as small talk.

La Boca

Same as yesterday, there was an after-school activity. Today’s event was a trip to La Boca.

Our guide was still Macarena. This time, we were given a sheet of paper with explanation of different important sites in La Boca. The whole sheet was in Spanish. Gulp.

Macarena was around to help with deciphering the sheet. It’s good that I didn’t visit La Boca on my own because I wouldn’t have known the significance of important buildings.

We started at the pier. The water was muddy and didn’t smell so good. On the pavement, there were chalk-drawn games.

One of the games was this box jumping game. Back in Malaysia, we call it 跳飞机(Translation: Jumping from [or is it on] airplanes).

There was also a gigantic tic tac toe which requires people to stand in the little circles. It reminded me of Hogwart’s gigantic chess pieces.

Our tour involved walking into one small lane, being stopped by touts to go sit in their coffee shops, looking at tango shows for tourists and lots of listening.

One surprising thing was that one of the coffee place touts managed to figure out where I was from. It started out with the usual calls of “Ni hao. Annyeong hasseyo” which I ignore.

Suddenly, the guy said, “Malaysia.” I stopped in my tracks, turned to him to give him a thumbs up and a “Muy bien!”

He proceeded to explain why he said Malaysia. “No ‘ni hao’. No ‘annyeong’. No ‘konnichiwa’. Is Malaysia.”

OK. That’s a good deduction, I suppose.

Bit of history of La Boca

I’m terrible at recounting history so if you want a proper version, Wikitravel La Boca will be great help.

La Boca used to be the living area of immigrants who found work at the shipyard. They built their houses using left over materials from the boats. The colorful walls were the result of using leftover paint from ship.

Writers and painted moved to La Boca, probably because it was rustic, and the place became a bohemian place.

From what I saw now, La Boca is mainly touristic. It’s a nice place to take photos that say, “Hey, I’ve been to Buenos Aires!”

After La Boca, we took a bus back to the main city area.

At night, I went to a tango show. I’ll tell you more in a separate post.

Month: June 2013

A coffee at Cafe Tortoni [YQrtw Day 71 Jun 17]

Trip to Cafe Tortoni

Day trip to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay [YQrtw Day 70 Jun 16]

Quick immigration process

Pretty little Colonia

Random stuff in Colonia

Where have you recently been to for a day trip? Share your comments below.

Preparing for my visa run/ Streets of Buenos Aires [YQrtw Day 69 Jun 15]

Streets of Buenos Aires

Poked fun by a jerk

On Ave Corrientes, Ave 9 de Julio

How was your weekend?

Caturday: Give a cat a rod

School trip to MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires) [YQrtw Day 68 Jun 14]

Art Moderno

Back to the hostel

Who is your favorite Latin American painter?

Lamuko’s Lokanta: A delightful Japanese restaurant in Pamukkale

Lamuko no Lokanta

Lamuko no Lokanta’s menu

Modelling Clay, the dog

Where was the strangest place you have eaten Japanese food?

It’s steak time! [YQrtw Day 67 Jun 13]

Have you cooked in a hostel before? What’s your best dish?

Chinese food by weight in Buenos Aires [YQrtw Day 66 Jun 12]

Off to pay my visa fee

How was your day? Did you have good soup?

Tango lesson and show in Buenos Aires [YQrtw Day 65 Jun 11]

Pick up to Complejo Tango

Food

The show must go on

Have you seen a tango show? Which part did you like best?

Visit to the colorful La Boca [YQrtw Day 65 Jun 11]

La Boca

Bit of history of La Boca

Would you paint the walls of your house like how they do in La Boca?