15 Million People Strong, Buenos Aires Shines

    Driving into this sprawling metropolis the streets were lined with trees with purple flowers in full bloom.  French architecture abounds and the wide streets make the place feel closer to NYC than anywhere else we have been.  However, there is distinctly a European feel in the place, as its inhabitants are almost all from European countries such as Italy and Spain.  Unlike NYC, there is an obelisk with apparently little meaning other than as a marker in the center of the city.  Parks dot the wealthy neighborhoods and a brilliant pedestrian street proudly shows off the many leather shops that are by products of all of the beef of this country.  Our tour of the city took us to a neighborhood full of brightly colored buildings with fake people statues in all of the windows.  Buenos Aires is the home of Tango, and in many restaurants professional tango dancers graced the diners with entertainment.  We saw the huge mansions of the Northern wealthy district complete with "shopping museums" as our tour leader called them, or malls way out of a normal person´s price range.  We also saw the shacks that were very reminiscent of the Kenya slums only with brick structures instead of mud.  We went to the world´s only Kosher McDonald´s outside of Israel and then saw Harry Potter in a very modern movie theater that oddly served sweet kettle popcorn instead of salty popcorn!  Like Rome, we tried walking around at night after our movie at 11 pm (dinner is often served from 9 pm until 11 pm, so this is not so late), but after we were told to hide our camera by a McDs security guard before we left and saw three men peeing on the sidewalk within a two minute span, we chose to take a taxi straight to our hotel.  Full of all modern conveniences, I would quite enjoy seeing more of this great city and coming back again one day!

The colorful boca neighborhood, complete with creepy statue people!

Argentina loves its dead things to eat.