I arrived on Wednesday morning and now it is Friday midday. It is so good to be here; I have done some sightseeing and I have enjoyed some good food. I really should try to speak more Spanish. I need to try harder. I think I shall spend some time doing language drills on the BBC languages web-site.
I am renting an apartment from a couple Steve and Mariana. Steve and I have known each other for a few years now; we met at a conference in New York about 4 years ago and stayed in touch. We have met up in Los Angeles and London and now in Argentina. Steve was living stateside but has been living in Argentina now for a year and a half. Mariana is from these parts; hence the move to Argentina to greatly simplify the story.
The apartment is in Palermo Viejo.; Viejo means old. This area was rundown about ten or so years ago. It has been become quite popular of late and is full of bars and restaurants. It reminds me place like East Dulwich and Northcote road in London. The area is self contained and you can find many thingss within walking distance. There is even an Irish pub in the area. There is a new shop or restaurant opening up here all the time. It is a fantastic place to be based in Buenos Aires. The buildings are not so tall here and it is quite laidback during the day. It can be quite hopping at night. Many of the streets are named after Latin Amercian countries in this area. The apartment for example is near Honduras street.
Buenos Aires is a big place; a few things I did not know until I got here. Most of the streets are one way and the driving is quite reckless and lets just say there is a lack of courtesy from drivers here; it does not mean they are bad people but their style is lousy; it everyone for them self when driving. The taxis drivers can be infuriating with the way they drive and cut you off. I saw the same kind of thing in Italy. So you need to drive quite agressively; it is like being in a video game.
This is a city full of dogs and people hire dogwalkers; it is quite common to see a guy walking about 6 dogs at a time. I did see one guy who should have been walking his canine charges but was instead having a long coffee break sitting outside a bar. The dogs did not seem to mind; they all lay about on the sidewalk around the table.
On Thursday morning, I went to Puerto Madera. This is new development in the city; some docklands have been turned into high tech office buildings and restaurants. There is a bridge in the middle of the development that is represents a couple doing the Tango. Check the photo gallery elsewhere on the web-site.
In the afternoon, I went on a guided bus tour of the city. One of the places we stopped in was the La Boca. Boca means mouth and the barrio is near the mouth of the river. This barrio is where many immigrants came to and it is the home of the Tango. From the photos, you can see the area has become very touristic; it was nice to walk around and see it all. But it was quite funny, to me, seeing all the couples in the neighborhood doing the Tango for the tourists. Tango is enjoying a great deal of popularity in the city at the moment; it is not just limited to the Boca area; this is something I have to do: is see some Tango performances and hear some music; one of my favorite composers is Astor Piazolla who wrote pieces like Libertango. I have danced the Tango on and off while living in London; I plan to take a few lessons here. The house in La Boca are quite distinct; they are mutlicoloured and often will have corrugated metal as walls.
In the evening, I went out with Steve and we went to restaurant in Palermo and I had a very good fillet steak along with some fine red wine. Argentina is famous for it's beef. Way back when when the Spaniards came to South America, they brought cows with them and when they left again the cows were left behind. Argentina is a mostly flat country. The cows had it good; wide open spaces lots of grass to munch on few predators. When the Spanish came back again, well you can imagine; these days the Argentines love a good BBQ. Apparently, the average Argentinean eats almost a kilogram of beef a week. I had the beef with very distinct condiment called chimichurri; I don't know of anything quite like it.
http://www.globalgourmet.com/destinations/argentina/sauce.html
The night before I went out with Steve, Marian and their son Les to a Mexican restaurant just down the street from the restaurant. I had a very nice chicken in Mole sauce. Mole is a sauce made from Chocolate and it is not sweetened. Yummy.
April 22nd
Today was an absolutely fantastic day; it was about 23 degrees Celsius.
I went with Steve and Mariana to the Relcoleta district. It is famous for its cemetery. It was quite an interesting place to walk around. Mariana was saying how many of the streets she knows in Buenos Aires are named after people buried here; she was saying how it is amusing for her to make the correlation.
You can see examples of ironwork in the photos that I took in the gallery link.
There are also a lot of cats living in the cemetery. Check the photo of scruffy cat.
We then went to Centro Cultural Recoleta and saw some contemporary art and a display of feather headdresses from the Amazon and some other artifacts made by Amazon Indians. There is just a few exhibits on at the musuem; I was quite impressed with the work of Ramiro Fernandez Saus.
Web-site for Maestro Impertinentes
His style has an antique look to it with the choice of colours he uses. The exhibit was series of portraits of people like Leanardo Da Vinci and Darwin and a few Spaniards and Latin Americans who I did not know. I definitely want to follow the works of this artist more.
Afterwards, we went to Steve's office; he had a few things to do. One of the great things about Buenos Aires is you can get almost everything delivered. We ordered some helados. It was so very good; I think it must the same thing as Italian gelatto. We can order pizzas and Chinese food in many major urban centres but tell me where can you gelatto delivered to your home or office? You can ever get medicines delivered by pharmacies in the middle of the night here.
And then we went to a local library to hear a music performance. Mariana is involved with a group that performs traditional Latin American folk music. The musical director for her group was giving a performance with his group called Cas..... The singing style is mostly acapella with instruments. Suffice to say they were very good and I was fortunate to see the performance in such an intimate setting a library.
That is it for the moment. All going well, I shall be going to a place called Colon on the weekend and get a chance to see some nature and hopefully some capybaras.