March 13, 2006
Yesterday we went to the crafts market on Balcarce. I first heard about it from Eduardo, the manager of the Parador Hostal where we are currently staying. Then his son Gonzalo reminded us about it yesterday.
The crafts market is every Sunday, all day long, till about 10 pm. Here are some pics I took as we walked to the market. We left the hostal around 5 pm.
We walked along Florida, which turnst into Balcarce. The first pic is of an old cinema which now only shows porn movies. The young guy working at the ticket window was kind enough to let Laura and I have a look for free. We stayed about 45 seconds and got the basic idea. I asked him why there was no sound or why it was turned down so low and he said because the neighbors complain if they can here the sounds from the street. The cinema is between the streets of Rioja, where the hostal is, and San Luis.
We walked about 4 blocks to San Martin street. This is a main street along which you find the city tourist info office, the main park (Parque San Migue) and at least one of the 24 hour Internet cafes. When you cross San Martin, Florida becomes a pedestrian street, or a peatonal. You can kind of see the "Av. Gral. San Martin sign. By thge way, Gral. means General. Like all of South America that I have seen, war monuments, and streets named after generals and dates of various wars and independence days are very common.
We bought some home backed cake at this table on the corner of San Martin and Florida.
Here is a pic of the peatonal, with the cake table on the left. Because it is a Sunday afternoon, not many people are out. On a weekday the peatonal is a lot more crowded.
Here is a place for kids with pretend cars and things that move around. These seem to be pretty popular here. Often they are packed with kids. I saw one of these in Jujuy, too.
Here are a couple pics of a "residencial" - which is something like a low price hotel. (I wasn't trying to take a picture of the Papa Noel (Santa Claus) shop, it just came out that way. I wanted to show the rooms on the second floor of the hotel.
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Also on the peatonal is this supermarket, "Vea" one of the large chains. The homeless man we saw before was sitting there again. He was still there when we came back around 10 at night.
A few blocks later you cross the dividing street, Caseros, where the street names change. Now the street becomes Balcarce. On the corner is a nice little park named after another General - Genral Belgrano. In the park there is a drinking fountain, a fountain with a statue of a small woman in it, and a statue of General Belgrano. Belgrano evidently helped fight the Spanish troops who came down from Bolivia trying to keep Argentina as a colony. On this day there was a pigeon on the General's head.
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The new five star hotel Alejandro 1 is facing the park.
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Put in link to jujuy
find homeless man pic