Kninja Knitter

Our ship finally set sail this evening (following an interesting delay) – so tomorrow I’ll add another country to my “visited” list. Today, though, was my whirlwind visit to Buenos Aires.

Travel Tales

An interesting tidbit about the port at Buenos Aires: the cruise ships have to dock quite a distance from the terminal, and between the two points are a significant number of shipping containers. So passengers are required to take a shuttle bus from the pier to the terminal and beyond. And because I’m traveling with a knitting group, there were knitting-related destinations as the top priority of our itinerary.

I believe I mentioned that the knitting focus for this whole trip was arranged by knitwear designer Laura Nelkin. Because she’s a designer, we have patterns to work with! And while our goodie bags included kits for a couple small projects, Laura designed a cowl for us to knit using two colors of a locally (to Argentina) sourced yarn – so we visited this shop to choose our colors, as each knitter received a voucher to get two skeins of this beautiful yarn.

Budetex is located in the yarn district of Buenos Aires’ Palermo neighborhood, so we had the opportunity to visit the other stores on the street. Most of the stores carry lots of acrylic yarn varieties, but I made a purchase at a store that specializes in wool varieties. What I bought is a 50/50 llama-merino blend, and it appears to be a DK weight yarn, but I’m still researching! I’ll share more when I know more. This is one of the challenges of navigating in a foreign country! My Spanish classes from high school and college have helped, but my vocabulary is limited. I was still able to manage. And for our next stop, we were treated to a visit to another local designer’s company.

Unfortunately, Joji Locatelli is visiting the US right now, so she wasn’t able to meet up with us. But some of her family works at the store. We were treated well here, offered snacks and drinks, and a nice discount on the merchandise. Again, more photos will come later. I bought a couple leather items: a darning needle case (only available in the showroom) and a small satchel-style project bag. Once everyone had the opportunity to shop, we piled back on the buses to return to the Palermo neighborhood, specifically Palermo SoHo (or Palermo Viejo) to grab lunch and possible see some of the neighborhood. Lunch took a while, so there wasn’t much opportunity to look around. But I still managed a few photos.

I grabbed lunch at a small artisanal brewery, though I opted for lemonade to keep a clear head. What I’ve failed to mention is that the weather has been brutally hot and humid. We reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit today, with up to 89% humidity. Phew!

After lunch, we proceeded to the historic district of Buenos Aires. I was glad to hear more about the two people I’m already familiar with having ties to the city… Evita Peron and Pope Francis.

We also learned about both Argentina’s revolutionary war against Spain (commemorated on May 25) and their Declaration of Independence (celebrated every July 9). I was glad to have the opportunity to stop into the cathedral where then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio preached before he ascended to the papacy. There are a couple spots in the cathedral where Pope Francis is mentioned. And also in the cathedral grounds is the crypt of the leader of the Argentinian revolution, José de San Martin. This church, as you can imagine, is gorgeous!

We made one last stop before returning to the terminal to get to our ship. And side note, I got a glimpse of this place on my way to my hotel on Tuesday evening – but it was dark, so I couldn’t make out any details.

The “Woman’s Bridge” is a pedestrian bridge in the Puerto Madero district, not far from the cruise ship terminal. Our guide pointed out that it’s shaped like a harp, which reminded me of the Samuel Beckett Bridge in Dublin.

On Friday I should have more time to get pictures during daylight as our group tour is relatively short. I’m also hoping to get to one of the bio-parks in Montevideo, but we’ll see how rested I am in the morning. We have another hot day ahead for us. So I’ll leave you with one last photo before I call it a night. I’m hoping I can remember to at least capture each day of the week once – an interesting reminder from the cruise line, someone is paid to update these rugs in the elevators each day.

Knit on. 🧶