Last post?

So.

We're back home, but life goes on. It's been something of a culture-shock - but I think we're both getting into the swing of things again. The holiday (which, by the way, is entirely the wrong word for it) was probably the most fascinating experience of either of our lives thus far, and I should imagine that that'll be hard to beat.

Meanwhile tomkat.blogspot.com will be left up like this, dormant, in the hope that 'future generations' might find it useful or interesting, but don't expect any new content ...

... Until our next trip, that is ;).

No more painfully slow uploading to ImageStation

So the photos are all online now (apart from the early US ones) - not everything has captions, yet, but one day I'm sure I'll get round to it.

... I say hello.

A bit more eloquent, eh? Smashing. I'm operating with glacial slowness these days, but sooner or later I'll come up with something.

Oh, I forgot

... All the remaining photos should be uploaded in a day or two. Whether I'll have the stamina to invent captions for all of them is an entirely different question.

To conclude

Well, yes, we got home safe and sound, of course, so it's back to our "everyday" UK existences from now on. We'll round this blog off with some sort of nifty closing statement soon - that is, when there's a bit of time to spare.

Heading home...

Bye bye Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires: Vol. 2

So what else have we done in Buenos Aires? We've eaten out at nice restaurants a couple of times - there's a strong Italian influence on Argentinian cuisine, so it's easier than usual for veggies -, and gone shopping. Yesterday we went out to the famous cemetery at Recoleta where posh porteños are buried: finding Evita is easy - just follow the hordes of American tourists. D F Sarmiento is also there. In the afternoon we watched Lost in Translation at a nearby cinema. The title in Spanish is "Perdidos en Tokio" - which is kind of ironic if you think about it...

Today - our last full day in Buenos Aires, in Argentina, in South America - we took the Subte south of town to San Telmo to visit the traditional Sunday antiques market, and then we walked even further south to La Boca, where we looked at the stadium of Boca Juniors, a famous Argentinian football team, and strolled along the colourful streets. There must be a Juniors game tonight, because there were lots of noisy blue-and-yellow football fans wandering around.

We caught the bus back to the Plaza de Mayo, where we stumbled across the shooting of an advert for something called Kas, a fizzy orange drink. Downtown, we finished our souvenir shopping (gotta spend those last few pesos!), watched some tango - and we're now on the way back to our hotel, exhausted. Hunger has struck, so we're going to grab a pizza en route.

Tomorrow we'll catch bus numer 86 from Avenida de Mayo out to the airport. Our plane leaves at 16.10, taking us back to Heathrow via Frankfurt. Back home soon!

New photos

Lots of them!

Buenos Aires: Vol. 1

We spent the morning checking out the historical sites - the Plaza de Mayo, for example - and buildings - the Casa Rosada and the Cathedral, resting place of Argentine Libertador San Martín. The Plaza de Mayo is famous for the demonstrations by the "Mothers of the Disappeared"; the Casa Rosada, "The Pink House", is where Evita (and Madonna...!) made her crowd-pleasing speeches from the balcony.

There are loads of cinemas in downtown BA - we've counted three within five minute's walk of our hotel -, and so we decided to have a movie afternoon. Yesterday we went to see The Last Samurai; today we took advantage of the 2-for-1 offer and saw Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Seabiscuit one after the other (interesting combination :). Tickets were ludicrously cheap, of course - 80p for each of us.

Time is ticking away, so that's all I've got time to write for now... Bye!

Back in Argentina

And so we're now back in Argentina. The port is convenient for downtown - just a few minutes walk away. Getting to and from Uruguay from here is much more efficient over water than over land - check your maps!

We'd pre-selected a fairly posh hotel from our Lonely Planet, as a kind of going-away present to ourselves. It's three-star, and very nice: a/c, cable TV, buffet breakfast and so on. It's lucky (!) the Argentinian economy collapsed or we'd never be able to afford it!

That's that so far. We've got four days here (as you can see from the rather unsettling counter on the right...), but there seems to be plenty to do, and it's by far the most cosmopolitan place we've been to in South America. We spent this afternoon walking along Avenida Florida, the classy pedestrian mall, packed with shops like Zara, Mango, Harrod's, C&A, Nike, Tower Records, blah blah. Prices are pretty cheap - we haven't bought anything yet, but I fear it's only a matter of time :). New music CDs are about 5 pounds each here - we're very tempted by the latest Dido album... We had lunch in McDonald's (yeah yeah, I know) - I wanted to see if the meat in an Argentinian Royale with Cheese tastes different to that in a UK Quarter Pounder (it doesn't really).

OK, that's it for now. We'll let you know if we manage to see any tango or Evita posters or Falklands propaganda etc. etc.