The weather still hadn't improved. Thankfully, when we exited to the street it wasn't raining however, but it did remain as grey and cloudy as what i thought only England could do.
Today we were to take one of the hop-on, hop-off city tour buses around Buenos Aires. There are three loops in different areas of the city. Today we were to do the southern and central loops, leaving the northern part for the following day. Within the southern part was the Boca Juniors stadium. This was to be our first stop off.
I have to say, I didn't really know much information about Boca Juniors prior to the tour. The things I did know were how they had a great rivalry with River Plate and the knowledge of a couple of their players in the past.
The tour was very informative. I had two pieces of information that stuck with me; the first was as to how they decided on their colours. They originally wanted light blue, this clashed with a rival so they had a match to decide who gets to keep the kit - they lost. As a result of this they came up with a clever way of deciding upon the new colours, they went to the port and waited for the next ship to come in. Whatever the colour of the country that the ship was from, they would take. The country turned out to be Sweden and thus the colours are dark blue and yellow. The second piece of information was the name of the stadium - La Bombonera. It turns out that the name of this in English translates to "the chocolate box". A much more interesting name than a corporate sponsor such as The Etihad or The Emirates.
We finished our tour and headed into a souvenir shop opposite. In here we were pestered by a Colombian sales assistant who was trying to sell us basically everything and to make conversation. He mentioned Big Ben and Black Sabbath - two very English things apparently... we eventually bought a couple of things but not in the same scale he was perhaps anticipating.
As we left the souvenir shop, the bus was right outside and ready to board - perfect timing. We hopped back on and continued the tour. The English option of the voice recording was hilarious, they probably should have just used a genuine English speaker... The pronunciation was atrocious. My favourite one was probably "iron".
After we were over half way through our trip around town the sun started to set. I didn't even realise that there was a sun to set as well! Hopefully it's a sign that the clouds are parting a little. The colours created were magnificent once more. Pinks and oranges lit up the clouds over the backdrop of the Buenos Aires skyline.
Buenos Aires is probably the most different city that we have visited in South America. It doesn't really feel like South America in the same respect. Santiago was modern but this is something else. There is a strong similarity to London. Emma thinks it's incredibly busy but I would say London is more crowded. The roads are a lot more suitable here, they have many wide avenues and plenty of lanes.
