A Personal Amateur Photography Blog
In the early days of river transportation a common style of boat was the sternwheeler. With it’s distinctive large wooden wheel on the back (stern) to propel it, it was a common sight along the Ohio River.
Today most of the sternwheels are mostly decorative, with a traditional propeller providing most of the propulsion. The boats at the Marietta Sternwheeler Festival were mostly campers on boats.
We went to Marietta to check out the stern wheel boats and found a car show too. This is another post featuring the unique styling of the grills of the cars and trucks.
A day of a blues festival provided plenty of people watching opportunities.
Some random views of the city.
Sunrise over the port.
A walk through the historic financial district.
The view of a school out from my 6th floor office window.
Where out of nowhere the window washer dropped down from above on this sketchy looking seat.
The Argentina relief on the Torre Monument.
The plaza in front of the Torre Monument.
Views from the top of the aforementioned monument.
Subway Art.
The Hall of Lost Steps at the Law School of The University of Buenos Aires.
The Floralisa Generica – a giant metal flower that opens and closes throughout the day.
Views from the 31st floor.
Sunrise on my last day in town for this trip. The more time I spend here the more I want to come back.
With the weekend by myself in Buenos Aires I was looking for something to do when I came across an 18km (11 mile) ‘Urban Trek’ across much of the city.
Note – with an all day hike this post is somewhat long…
The tour started out at the visitor information center in La Boca, a working class neighborhood along a seriously polluted river. It reminded me of Youngstown and Cleveland in the 1970s.
Our trek started out with 7 intrepid hikers and a guide. It would not finish that way.
The people of La Boca are proud of their neighborhood…
The center is a tourist area packed with colorful shops.
The area was setting up for a Sunday artist market.
We quickly left the area and passed by the colorful houses which legend says were painted various colors with the left over paint from ships.
La Boca is most known for their soccer team. The stadium is called La Bombonera, which translates to the Chocolate Box, from the shape of the stadium. The seating is in an incredibly steep pitch.
This 49,000 seat stadium is jammed in the middle of the neighborhood.
The walk through the rest of La Boca provided a number of interesting views.
Eventually we made our way to the San Telmo neighborhood, along with more diverse photo ops.
We passed under a freeway that once housed an interrogation center during the military dictatorship era in the 1970s. Sadly during the construction of the freeway they found remains of many who never made it out of the center. There are tributes to those lost during those times.
Port Madero is a new area of tall buildings built in the former port of Buenos Aires.
One young lady on our tour, who was from Mexico, took selfies at virtually every stop along the way. She was very entertaining in making sure she had the perfect look – and a great sport when I asked to photo her taking her photo.
Our final stop on the morning part of the hike was the Plaza de Mayo.
After a break for lunch we headed out for the afternoon with a new guide, and only 4 hikers.
Having spent a few weeks in this part of town I was familiar with much of what we were passing, but it was still entertaining as our new guide was a very funny young lady.
A review of San Martin Plaza and Palacio.
Pelligrini Plaza.
The Addams Family Palacio (not really but it seems as though it should be)
An finally a stop at Recoleta Cemetery. Our hike continued for another couple of miles but didn’t produce any interesting photo, or the photographer was too tired to take them 🙂
While long, it was a very worthwhile day. Both guides were knowledgeable and entertaining, and I was able to see many areas of the city that most don’t. If you have an entire Sunday to spend in Buenos Aires I highly recommend putting on your best walking shoes and heading out…
A quiet Saturday morning was a great time to take a guided tour of Retiro Station – in Spanish!
The station actually is comprised of 3 separate terminus’. The largest and most grand is Retiro Mitre, named for the line that terminates there.
The center concourse has an excellent vaulted ceiling.
Nearly all of the trains departing from here are commuter rail, so they come and go frequently. It is easily one of the busiest in South America (but not so much on a Saturday morning).
Why are we outside a Burger King?
And why is our tour all looking up?
At this amazing skylight in the middle of Burger King. Obviously it used to be a much more grand restaurant than Burger King, but at least they have retained it.
The second, much smaller terminal is Retiro Belgrano.
The final is Retiro San Martin – graced by a statue of the father of Argentina, General San Martin.
They have kept a great old schedule board.
But it is time to kiss this place goodbye.
An earlier post had a single photo of the Palacio de Aguas Corrientes (Palace of Running Water), but with a brief break for lunch from work one day I was able to go check out the small museum, and the most amazing collection of toilets you will ever see (not something I thought I would ever note in this blog) shown on the feature photo for this posting.
Completed in 1894, it is an amazing building on the outside, hiding the basic functions of water pumping and filtration on the inside. A small museum details the history of plumbing in Argentina 🙂
The outside of the building is amazing from any angle. Amazing architecture and a huge toilet collection, what else could you ask for.
