biking buenos aires OR the escape from the beehive

i've been busy as a bee in a beehive.  this is truer than you think since everything i do is set to the background noise of those god-damned vuvuzela horns from the world cup.  anyway, i've actually gotten several writing jobs through this website called elance, writing eBooks and authoring blogs and whatnot.  so i have been spending a lot of time working from home. and during this time my beloved bolshevik has been quite busy watching futbol matches ... three a day!

anyhoo, i may have mentioned that i am a member of the south american explorers club.  needing to get out of the house and away from the sound of a million vuvuzelas, i decided to join them on a bike ride through buenos aires.

taking this bike ride has really inspired me to buy a used bike once we move into our "grown up" apartment.  turns out there are lots of bike lanes around the city.

before i describe the ride, please excuse the fact that i will most likely not use the correct names for any of these sites, and that all information given may or may not be factual.  i should be a tour guide!

we rode through palermo park and stopped at the top of a little bridge overlooking this famous large metal flower.  the flower opens its petals in the morning and then closes them at night.  kinda cool.

then we rode plaza san martin, where they are showing every game of the world cup, projected onto a large screen.  more about that later.  plaza san martin has this lovely statue (shown above) honoring one of the founding fathers of buenos aires.  sadly i forget his name.  maybe san martin?

then we rode through reconquista, which seems to be a combination of irish bars and financial looking buildings.  then we continued on to plaza de mayo:

 having been to buenos aires before, i had actually already visited many of these sights.  so i was very excited when we went through puerto maderno and onto the nature preserve, which i hadn't seen yet.  it was very beautiful, and it had that kind of central park type feeling to it where you feel as though you have escaped the city into another world.

 then we stopped by the river.  yes, this huge body of water is actually a river.  apparently, it is the widest river in the world, and separates buenos aires from uruguay.

 we went back through puerto maderno to take a look at the swinging bridge.  this bridge actually swings open to let ships go by. 

 then we ventured into dangerous "la boca"... oooh, dangerous.  apparently la boca is considered a bad neighborhood, but so far i think it's pretty cool.  i love a colorfully painted house.  and it is home to the bolshevik's favorite local futbol team, the boca juniors.

 the famous caminito ... birthplace of the argentine tango.

 and then as it began to get dark, our lovely bike tour came to an end.  i have to say, there's nothing quite like biking as a means of getting to see a city.  i have a new understanding of how the different neighborhoods of buenos aires are connected.  and of course i have a newfound desire to go buy a bike.

 the end.