The Avenida de Alvear, above referred to, runs through the most fashionable residential quarter of Buenos Aires, a quarter filled with veritable huge palaces which with their gardens surround the Recoleta, the fashionable cemetery. A strange city of the dead in which the coffins are seen on shelves contained in small plate-glass fronted temples, so that all may view the last outward casings of generations.
On “The Day of the Dead” (All Saints’ Day) the Recoleta is a blaze of beautiful wreaths and floral tributes; afterwards too often replaced, alas, by ugly contrivances in porcelain or, worse still, enamelled iron.
Returning to Buenos Aires proper one must not, cannot, forget CALLE FLORIDA, “The Bond Street of the South.” So called because in it are situate most of the finest shops in South America for the sale of what are sometimes officially described as articles of luxury; wearing apparel of the best and costliest, for both sexes, jewellery, stationery, etc. It is, in fact, to Buenos Aires all Bond Street once was, and old Bond Street to some extent still is, to London.
Needless, almost, to say, Florida deals exclusively in imported goods and a very great majority of its shopkeepers are foreigners; among whom the purveyors of “Modes,” “Robes” and “Lingerie” are, naturally, mostly French.
No vehicular traffic whatever is now allowed in Calle Florida between certain hours of the afternoon; in order not to incommode the throngs of fashionable shoppers with whom it is usually crowded. It is the only street in which Argentine ladies of high degree are to be seen on foot. In bygone and less crowded times it was the scene of the afternoon Corso; when play was made with fans and gallants ogled from the edges of the pavement.
There is at present still a lack of Hotel accommodation suitable for Europeans of moderate means. There are great numbers of Hotels in Buenos Aires, but the good ones are very expensive while the cheaper ones are not very good. That is to say, one must have got accustomed to the South American haphazard fashion of service and general arrangements before being able to regard the latter as in any way comfortable. Montevideo is still worse off; having few Hotels which can be regarded as good (though there are one or two), while prices, as in everything else, run higher than in Buenos Aires.