FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ARGENTINA! BUENOS AIRES
what's up everyone here from buenos aires the capital of argentina we just arrived here yesterday for those of you that watched our previous videos you'll know that me and carol got a covid over the new years and we were supposed to come here on the 5th of january and that didn't happen because we got covered so we ended up delaying it by about uh two weeks and we were still unsure if we would be able to make it because we needed to pass the pcr test right get a negative pcr but luckily yeah we did the test a few days ago and the test came back negative so that was about 10 days after all my symptoms had passed but that changes from person to person some other people might still be testing positive so it's hard to know how long it will take to actually get a negative one so i might as well go over the requirements for coming here to argentina it's actually only just reopened recently it's been completely shut down for like almost uh two years because of covid so yeah it's reopened so obviously the negative pcr test you need insurance that has covered cover coverage as well for like hospital coverage stuff like that so you'll need that and you can come if you're not vaccinated but i think you have to quarantine for two weeks if you don't have the vaccine so if you are vaccinated you don't have to quarantine at all you don't have to do any further tests when you arrive so yeah you're just pretty much free to enter and there's also like a declaration form that you got to fill in online just saying that you don't have cover then you haven't been in contact with people stuff like that so yeah those are like the main things that you have to do to come here and this is the cool apartment that we're staying in that carol found online what's the name of this again it's called le petit suite and it was 35 dollars per day uh we are in a very good location but i think we can you can still find cheaper options but this is it was a a nice price and it's a nice place as well yeah it's really nice so big comfy bed a lot of places that we go never have really comfortable or big beds but yeah that's a huge bed got a desk area where i can work and then it's pretty interesting look at this you have this door here that looks like a cupboard but it's actually the the kitchen so we did some cooking last night got some simple utilities but enough to do some cooking and then this is also a good bathroom not often we get an actual bath so i took my first bath in like i don't know six months yesterday and we got nice hot water as well and we do have a balcony area so this is a bit of a view of downtown buenos aires got the big modern buildings here business buildings and then a mixture of modern buildings and historical buildings like that so the weather is a bit gloomy today but we're going to go out and explore buenos aires because we're only going to be here for today so got to make the most of it so now we're on one of the famous uh shopping streets here called florida so we came here yesterday i think it was busier yesterday right on a on a weekday today is a saturday i thought it would be busier today on a saturday people out shopping it's going to be emptier today yeah i mean the weather is a bit bad it has been raining so maybe that's why it's quiet but yeah there's all sorts of different stores here clothes we bought a travel adapter here yesterday because the book socket in argentina is one that we've never seen before i don't think so it's very very weird it's like three different things like triangle yeah it's different so we need to we had to buy one yeah it was very cheap so this walking street here actually reminds me a bit of mexico city because you get very similar spanish colonial buildings here impressive spanish colonial buildings like that one there look at that looks beautiful all around so while you're walking around these streets one of the things that you're going to hear the most is cambio cambio you got people saying cambio cambio all the time which means exchange for money exchange so argentina is going through like a financial crisis it's actually been like this for ages now many years but for tourists coming here it's actually kind of difficult so they have the official rate where one dollar is around 104 pesos which isn't actually accurate it doesn't actually show what the value of the peso is at all and then you have the unofficial exchange rate which is more around 207 that's what we got it for so literally if you go to places that do the unofficial exchange rate your trip is going to be half the price so you got to watch out with that so if you go to like banks or atms or any places where you use your card you're going to get the official exchange rate which is yeah twice as expensive but as you're walking around here you'll have all these cambio cambio guys and if you go to their store you'll get the unofficial exchange rate or you can use like western union which is a proper company you can send your money here online and then go to one of their branches and get the money out there so these walking streets also have loads of places where you can eat right in the middle of the street and we actually just got this little like paper from a person so one of the common dishes here is beef fiji chorizo which i'll probably eat today so that's a thousand one hundred pesos yeah we found that the food here is really good price right yeah especially if you use the unofficial exchange places yeah and yeah compared to brazil where the price of the meat is very expensive at the moment so here they have very affordable prices yeah meat here is a really good price so i think this is one of the main big streets or big avenues here loads of roads i think there's like six different streets here it's called avenida nueve de julio hopefully i said that right so even some of the roads are just bus lanes so these two here are just for buses going down the middle man that's a gigantic street yeah it is there are many like hotels and stores everything the big i think maybe center like a financial center maybe yeah it looks like it and we just came here quickly to check out the big monument we always see this in uh pictures of buenos aires there you go buenos aires so the reason that this monument is here is because it's the first place where they flew the argentinian flag at the time there was a tower called san nicolas that it says so right now facing it we have the argentinian flag over there so right next to that monument back there is the theater death row colon so this theater is from 1908 and apparently singers like pavarotti have done performances here right now it's not open but i know sometimes you can do like guided tours inside it's supposed to be really beautiful still looked really impressive from the outside though so this is the back of the theater and we just noticed that there seems to be some impressive square here with loads of incredible looking historic building got another one here look at that so definitely impressed by the architecture of buenos aires wow even from behind it looks amazing doesn't it yeah or maybe this is the entrance oh yeah i think this is the entrance then i think the other side on the main street was actually the back entrance yeah so it looks better from this side so this monument here has the name of the square plaza la bay so that's what this area is called really cool though with the the palm trees as well hey look at that building there as well what is that president escuela some sort of old school yeah maybe yeah yes i was saying about the impressive buildings look at this one on the same square huge one so this one here is the supreme court check that out and then it's interesting over there as well it looks like part of the corner of that building is historic and then the rest of it's like modern kind of mixed it together carol it kind of just feels like we're in uh europe yeah yeah it does i think uh from all the places that we've been in south america and central america this one looks more like europe than the others yeah i'd say yeah the most european so far obviously all of them have a bit of europe right because they were colonized by the europeans so the majority spanish and then brazil with the portuguese so you get glimpses of different kinds of architecture from that time but here it's just so much just seems uh a lot more and also the people here you can tell pretty much the majority from uh european ancestry light descended from europe a lot more than any other country that we've been to in this region usually it's a lot more mixed i guess like the races and stuff but yeah here seems less mixed more european check out this artwork here so here we have the famous argentinian dance the the tango have you ever danced the tango no but we're gonna try and take lessons here i've never i've never even done samba so the chance of me dancing tango is very slim yeah that'd be cool to see though so i'm not sure if we're going to use it today but yeah around here you get the subways there always looks pretty old-fashioned right the metal like in paris oh paris says yeah okay yeah so i guess you can get around pretty much everywhere by subway so this famous square right here plaza de mayo is probably the most famous one here in buenos aires many big events have happened here including the revolution against the spanish which was in 1810 and it was in may so i guess that's why it's called plaza de mayo may mayo so just like the other ones many important historical buildings around here this one is called the cabildo so this was the seat of the colonial government originally built in the 1600s but it's been renovated many times from a photo that i saw i think it had like 11 arches so it went it went further out on each side but yeah they cut down the arches to make these roads here on either side and it looks like it's open so we're gonna check it out on the inside so this is the inside of the cabildo so it is just a national museum now and it's for free you don't have to pay anything to come inside here and there's basically just like little rooms museum areas where it's telling you about life in the past around here during the revolution also mentions a few things about different wars so yeah there's a part that talks about their english when they were invading here i didn't know that so yeah something new so this area just shows you different details about the excavation of this area that started in 1991 so i guess this here is some of their findings i wonder how old that bottle is yeah just different kinds of like pottery plates cups here it says uh indigenous ceramics were also found these ones right here so this map here shows you how it would have been in 1816 so the lower part of argentina patagonia was all indigenous territory that's where we're going tomorrow and even parts of the top was still indigenous so on the other side of the plaza de mayo is the most famous building which is this one right here casa rosada which translates to the pink house you can see why and this was built in the mid-1800s and it's the official office of the argentinian president so the weather is not looking good right now it looks like there's a storm coming the forecast did say there was going to be like a thunderstorm so yeah hopefully we don't get caught in that and we're going to head to a popular neighborhood now called la boca we were looking at trying to get a bus there but it turns out that you need like some sort of card and we don't have that card so we're just gonna get an uber instead so that uber cost us 374 pesos i think it was around like 12 to 13 minutes we had to wait quite a while for it to arrive though and this is the neighborhood of la boca so known to be the most colorful neighborhood in buenos aires as you can see even the ground is colorful this is crazy i don't think we've ever seen a ground like that before and i guess this is some sort of like port area not even sure i didn't know we were on the like river side here so yeah i guess we're going to find a place to eat first and then we'll explore labor yeah i think there are many restaurants so let's check the main streets out yeah so like carol was saying loads of places to eat here got maradona lots of juice i guess like a fair area as well loads of arts and souvenirs got the cobbled streets yeah and this is the spot that i always see in the pictures with the people dressed in the tango clothes what's this main street called the this this is like the famous road right yeah i think it's yeah definitely the most lively area that we've seen in buenos aires so far so this is where all the people are carol not in not in the downtown area yeah there's loads of cool art shops here you want to buy some nice paintings nice colorful paintings try that one out carol check out the balconies oh yeah the people on the balconies so here we have the centro cultural de los artists cultural art center the tango again that's cool that work right i like the cat yeah so this place just a bunch of art shops and souvenir shops everywhere i watch that guy playing out the traditional music foreign okay i think this might be the most colorful place i've ever been yeah it's literally every color you could imagine it's here i mean we go to places where the buildings are colorful in south america but not the floor look at this that's wild so we found this quiet restaurant to eat at easier to talk here i'm not sure what it's called no name on the thing works so i think i am going to go for the beef chorizo which is one of the famous dishes here so that's a thousand five hundred pesos i think these are for two people this seems to be more of a mix with like sausage as well yeah they have like italian dishes here i think a lot of argentinians are descendants from italy and spain mainly yeah yeah those two i've seen a lot of like pizzerias italian pizzerias yeah loads of pizza places buenos aires so the food has arrived and this is the famous argentinian dish that i got so look at the size of that beef there so i actually ate this yesterday as well but without all these uh vegetables and they also bring bread as stardust they did that yesterday didn't they for free just included look how saucy yours looks yeah it's a gnocchi with tomato sauce yeah and cheese now so yeah i think this is like a specific cut that they do of beef it's usually very fatty the one that i got yesterday has a lot of fat on it but yeah i like that so let's see how this one tastes very juicy very tasty so the one that i had yesterday tasted like it didn't have any salt so that was kind of weird i thought maybe it was an argentinian thing but this one's very salty so i guess it was just the place that i ate yesterday this one's a lot better i imagine yours look taste very much of the tomato as well it's different from the one that i usually eat in brazil oh it tastes different yeah i can taste the potato stronger than but i usually taste in other gnocchi so this is the overall build because carol also got a juice and i got a bottle of water so 4250 that's with an extra 400 with a service as well so we found this quieter area now still super colorful though just no music or restaurants or bars around here are these actually places people live though or is it just all being converted to stores i don't know i think some people live like that one yeah that looks like a house yeah so i think some are stores like this but then some over here are actual houses oh the doggos so we're back at our apartment now the weather looks like it's gonna change and yeah we've done quite a bit of walking so like i said before we're only here one day before we got covered we were supposed to spend three weeks here in argentina so so we were going to spend more days here in buenos aires but yeah since we had to change some of our plans we're only gonna spend two weeks here now but it's gonna be two very action-packed weeks the rest of the trip is gonna be in patagonia different regions in patagonia that's the main reason we came here so yeah that's gonna be awesome and hopefully you found this video useful especially with the money thing because it's yeah pretty confusing here i'm pretty sure a lot of people don't know about the two different very different exchange rates like for example that lunch that we just bought now i think it was around like twenty dollars overall but yeah if we got the money at a bank or an atm that would have been like forty dollars so it is a massive difference you're still paying the people the same amount in paisle obviously they're receiving the same amount but the amount for you because of the exchange rate will uh will change a lot so that's kind of confusing probably in all the videos we're gonna write both the official dollar and the the dollar blue that's what they call the other exchange rate in both of the corners it's still going to confuse people but there's no way to make it not confusing really i'm not going to go through this explanation in every single video so that's just how it's going to have to be so if you like this video just drop a like to support us subscribe like see more videos from here in argentina or anywhere else that we go in the world follow us on instagram and we'll see in the next you
2022-01-30 10:19
