We arrived in Buenos Aires after an uneventful fourteen and a half hour flight having been lucky to sleep for a while. It always amazes me why the cabin crew wait until you are about one from arrival to hand out the arrival immigration and customs forms just when you are feeling rather tired. If they gave you the papers as you boarded then you would be fit and ready to go with your passport ready etc. but no they wait until you are properly tired and then hand them to you.
The immigration form was written in very small print and almost unreadable as far as I was concerned but then the customs form asked what mobile phone, model and serial number were you carrying, As we bought the phones about three years ago, who knows what model they are and as for serial number, we don’t even know how to open the back oif the phone and so left the info blank. The guy sitting next to me was obviously a little ahead of me on the form and said is this personal question; it says here are you carrying semen? Cause he said he wasn’t sure anymore.
After all the form hassle, they didn’t even look at the form when we arrived and just put the bags through the x-ray machine.
We had to chase around for our pre-booked car but eventually located it and we arrived at the Hotel Duque Boutique at around eleven o’clock in the morning and because of our early arrival we were offered breakfast and eventually got to our room about two hours later and ready for a shower and a brief rest.
We took a taxi downtown to the waterfront where all the old port buildings are and then walked around for as a while and then headed up to the shopping district which was pretty busy and surprised to see so many people and also so many police everywhere. They stood in pairs about every fifty yards or so and so we presume they are there protecting us tourists, We also came across a little demonstration with people banging drums and other people lying on the main road holding crosses and with placards that we really did not understand but think it was about missing persons.At about five pm we needed a glass of something and so went back to the port area again and came across a beef restaurant strongly recommended by one of our German friends and so after an extremely large glass of chardonnay with some appetisers we then ordered a rib eye for Jennifer and a T bone for Noel and they were both excellent and washed down, of course, with a bottle of Malbec and then we were really full.
We left the restaurant and it was going dark and so we walked along to the Hilton Hotel but stopped en-route to take some photos of the ‘red sky at night’ with views over the port and part of town.The town of Buenos Aires is quite interesting with many large parks and old buildings which are slowly being repaired and brought back to life
We then took a taxi back to the Hotel around nine pm and really ready for a good night’s sleep.
