On our morning walk through the city we stumbled upon a rather grand ceremony taking place over at Plaza San Martin with colourful mounted grenadiers, in full-on royal anthem mode circling the imposing monument to General Jose de San Martin, one of Argentina’s national heroes and liberator of South America.

We couldn’t make out what was happening or who this was all being staged for but a quick question to someone standing beside me revealed the answer. The King and Queen of Spain no less! We’d stumbled upon the first state visit to Argentina by the Spanish monarchs. It was quite surreal actually to be standing so close to King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia as they laid their floral wreath with just the odd burly security guard between us of course. National anthems rang out played by the mounted grenadiers and the crowd dutifully cheered and the royals waved before the motorcade made off to the Casa Rosada to meet with the Argentine President. It was all very grand and so unexpected!