Buenos Aires' La Boca Neighborhood

La Boca is a neat place to walk around in Buenos Aires. Definately a stop on all the tourist tours, but there is a lot to see there and small things to buy so it's an interesting stop. The neighborhood is along the water with docks, piers, and boats. The history of the colorful homes in the neighborhood is that the people who owned the boats who lived there would just use their left over paint on the homes, so every home is a different color. Here is a website with more on the history of La Boca.

Because it is a place frequented by tourists, there are Tango performers that bring their own music (stereo) and lay out a hat for donations for small performances. We saw a family of Tango dancers that drew a crowd of a hundred people or so, and for over a half hour they hyped up the show, introduced their kids, not so subtly begged for money... We lost patience and gave up on it without seeing a thing, bit of a let down for sure, all hype no Tango! They must work the crowd for 45 minutes and dance for 5-10 minutes, pretty annoying, especially for people on a schedule or part of a tour group (which many of the tourists in this area are part of). In several of the tourist filled areas where there are pedestrian only streets you have the possibility of Tango shows in the middle of the street, much like this photo here.

La Boca is also famous for its football (soccer) club, Boca Juniors, one of the most popular clubs in Argentina and around the world. Diego Maradona, the Michael Jordan of Argentine soccer, who scored a world cup goal to let Argentina win it all in 1986, played for Boca Juniors as his club team in Argentina.