The city has some interesting architecture and sports some nice parks in the Palermo district, but I was a bit disappointed by the lack of a waterfront. The city lies near the banks of Rio de la Plata or River of Silver, but to get to the water is a bit of long walk away from the edge of town and once there, the view is largely obstructed by trees. Now, it's not the most beautiful river in the world, but it still seemed like it'd be a nice place to hang out if it were managed differently.
While in the U.S. the president's residence is the White House, in Argentina, true to colorful Latin flavor, it is the La Casa Rosada or Pink House. Not only is the color of the house pink, but at night it is lit with bright pink lights. In front of La Casa Rosada, is the famous Plaza de Mayo where protest signs are ever present and every week mothers who lost their children in the war over the Islas Malvinas meet each week to march together. The Malivinas are known to most of the world as the Falkland Islands, a British territory that was contested militarily by Argentina thirty years ago during Margaret Thatcher's time in power. Protesting is a favorite pastime of Argentinians and the Malvinas seem to be their favorite topic.
My main goal while in Buenos Aires was to improve my Spanish. I took daily classes and came a long way, but I can't yet keep up with people when they speak at their normal speed. When I watch TV in Spanish with Spanish subtitles, I do a bit better.
At the end of my stay, my friend Massey flew down from the U.S. to travel with me for a few weeks. I had been waiting to go to a soccer game until he arrived and I checked the schedule ahead of time to make sure they would be a game when he was here. There are actually three local major teams and the one that had a game the day we wanted to go, Independiente, was in a part of town where tourists don't usually go. Actually, Lonely Planet says specifically not to go there because it's too dangerous, so I decided not to take my phone so that it couldn't get stolen. Unfortunately, when we got off the city bus, I realized that the map I had was a tourist map and the area we were in was off the edge of it. My phone had a map of the area, but I had left it behind. We wandered around for quite awhile and asked many people how to get to the stadium, but few people seemed to know and sometimes I had trouble understanding what they were saying. We finally found the stadium just in time to see the beginning of the match, but there was nobody there.
It turned out that I had looked at the schedule when it was still April and I had confused Saturday May 5th on the calendar with Thursday April 5th. So there was no game that day. Finding our way back without a map proved even more difficult than getting there because we'd wandered in many different directions trying to find the place, but we did eventually make it back without getting mugged. At no time did I feel in danger and everyone was very helpful. It didn't seem like that bad of a neighborhood, but maybe it's different at night. We thought that despite my calendar mix up, we'd be able to catch a game in two days, but it turns out that apparently the home team is listed first instead of second on the schedule I was looking at, quite abnormal. In fact, all the local teams were on stretches of away games the whole week. So in the end, we never did get to see a soccer game.