The street market is rather run-down but very touristy with bunch of vendors selling handicrafts, souvenirs, art work, paintings, trinkets and what have you. Occasionally, young men and women dressed up in Tango dancer attire perform their genre and some would approach passerby and persuade them for photo shoot to earn tip and pocket money!
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| Cobble-stoned street and alleyway. |
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| Brightly painted zinc shacks. |
Almost in all the souvenirs shops, street vendors and outlets, you find one item: the yerba mate gourds or cups on sale. Yerba mate is a herbal tea consumed by the South Americans. It is said to have the strength of coffee and the health benefits of tea. It is drank from a metal straw from a container called gourd. The straw has a filter at the lower end to filter off the tea leaves.
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| Yerba Mate. |
Paintings and art work featuring Tango are aplenty.
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Eva Peron, Maradona and Carlos Gardel are regarded as national icons in Argentina. But in La Boca, it is probably Maradona who rules supreme.
Tucked in this tightly packed neighborhood is a soccer stadium called La Bombonera. This stadium was first built some 80 years ago with timber bleachers. This stadium is unique because it has a flat stand on one side of the pitch and three steep stands for the rest of the stadium. It is nicknamed "The Chocolate Box" because of this odd shape. Because of its good acoustics, Elton John, the Bee Gees and the Backstreet Boys had performed there.
The fame of this stadium is not so much because of its odd shape but rather its owner, Club Atletico Boca Juniors or Boca Juniors or simply CABJ, one of the most popular soccer clubs in Argentina. It claims to have 16 million fans! With Diego Maradona as a former player of this club, it's inclusion as a must see item is understandable. Maradona played for this club twice, first from 1981-1982 and then from 1995 -1997.
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