Finally en route.

Buenos Aires 25-11-2019

We started our trip in the morning of the 22nd of November leaving Asker for Gardermoen airport to get flight KL 1144 to Amsterdam. We were lucky and got seats in C-class. The flight was fully booked just like the remaining flights of the day. This part of the trip we did on a stand-by base. For the trip to Buenos Aires on the 23rd we just used  our once a year option to go IPB booked. 

We had planned an overnight stay with my niece Alyn in Alkmaar and her partner Niels who was kind enough to pick us up at Schiphol Airport. We took them to their choice of restaurant which happened to be in Bergen and their choice was to go there by bike. The next morning, on Alyn's birthday, after a birthday song and a nice breakfast we went for a walk in the dunes. 

We left Alkmaar around 18.00 by bus and train for SPL to catch flight KL 701 to EZE. There were quite some new features at the international departure part of the airport. I noticed that I'm not there every day anymore. I was still recognised by the purser. We had bought a seat just behind the economy comfort zone and were really lucky to have the seat next to us free. With this and extra attention from the crew we had a very good  13 hours+ trip. On arrival (7 o'clock in the morning) we had preordered a taxi via Taxi Ezeiza and that worked very well, though the driver seemed tired and the car was not the best one. 

At our hotel Castelar, which is centrally located on Avenida de Mayo, they could not find the booking. We had to wait for 3 hours anyhow before the room was free. We left our luggage behind and went for a long walk in the city. The weather was nice, from 17 degrees in the morning til 25 later in the day. The city located on the South Atlantic ocean seems to be windy. It was very quiet on this early Sunday morning. We crossed the enormous Av 9 de Julio in direction Plaza de Mayo with Casa Rosada and Cathedral Metropolitana, the former church from Pope Frans. From there we moved on to Puerto Madero, a recently developed area at the docks and where they have renovated the old warehouses. 
 

We walked back to the hotel passing by the famous restaurant Tortini and at 12 o'clock people were already queuing up outside. At hotel Castelar they had found out that we had to be at the Cyan Hotel de las Americas but the touroperator had forgotten to tell us. A friendly taxidriver had a conversation with us using google. It was good to sleep for a few hours in a good room with a good bed. 
 

Later in the day we walked on to see Teatro Colón. I hope we have som time to visit later. 
We  walked to Plaza San Martín and that area. We found a very local restaurant and with our first bottle of good Argentinian wine, we unwinded and called it a day. We walked nearly 12 km after a long flight.