Buenos Aires

We left home last night at 6pm for the drive to Heathrow, which took nearly an hour and a half. The traffic in west London was diabolical.

As our flight didn't leave until 9.45pm, we had plenty of time and weren't concerned at the slow progress. We arrived at 7.30pm and checked in. As I expected, we didn't manage to get an upgrade.

We spent the time until we were called to board in the BA lounge having a very good evening meal. At least we now didn't need to eat the pretty dire meal that is served up for the economy and World Traveller Plus passengers. While we were waiting, an announcement came over the loudspeaker to say the Johannesburg flight had been cancelled. You can imagine the cursing that went on from all the passengers in the lounge who were bound for South Africa. It suddenly occurred to me what would happen if our flight was cancelled at the last minute. There would be no chance of us getting another to reach the boat by Saturday. I really should have thought about this being a possibility and we should have flown out at least a day earlier.

As it was, our flight left on time and, apart from it being pretty bumpy for the middle part of the flight, it was an uneventful but extremely tedious long flight. In all, we were airborne for thirteen hours and twenty five minutes.

As we came in to land, I took this photo of the wing, which you can see is flexing upwards by several feet. It's amazing how the wings can take such stress.

The flexing wing of the plane

We landed at Pistarini Airport, Buenos Aires at 8.30am. It took ages for our bags to come through and as we waited in the baggage hall, I noticed how many bags came off the carousel before ours without the Priority Tags that we had on our luggage. So much for BA's baggage service!!

We finally left the baggage hall and then had to queue up to have our bags x-rayed before we could leave the terminal. We had arranged for a car to take us to our hotel. The traffic was very heavy for quite a large part of the journey, but we kept moving. We had to go through several tolls on the motorway.

Entering the centre of Buenos Aires

We reached The Magnolia Boutique Hotel at about 11am. The hotel is located in the Palermo district, which, as we were to find out later, is a very interesting and vibrant part of the city.

The Magnolia Boutique Hotel

We checked in and were immediately impressed by the very pleasant staff. When we saw our room, called Paraiso (Paradise), we felt we had struck gold! It definitely felt like a 5-Star hotel.

Our very comfortable and compact room

On the floor above is a roof terrace.

Relaxing in the sunshine on the hotel roof terrace

We asked the receptionist where we could go for a snack and he told us to head for the Palermo Soho district which was a short walk from the hotel. The weather was beautiful and the walk took us past Armenia Plaza and many boutiques, bars, cafes and restaurants. We liked the look of a cafe on the corner of one the intersections called Felicidad. We had a very enjoyable meal and a couple of beers, while we watched the local Portenos walking past. It was a lovely way to spend an hour after the long flight from London.

Our lunch cafe, the Felicidad

After lunch, we walked to the Plaza Cortaza where there was a street market. Here are a couple of photos of the area.

We walked back to our hotel and chilled out for the rest of the afternoon. In the evening, we ate at a restaurant called 1810, which is just along the street from the hotel. We both had Locro, a casserole of pork, beans and sausage similar to cassoulet. It was very good. We were the first diners in the restaurant at 7.30pm, as we have to be up at 5am tomorrow to make our way to Jorge Newberry airport to catch our 8.20am flight to Ushuaia for the start of our cruise.