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Published: December 30th 2004
Fabulous Tango in Buenos Aires
Go see it, it is your life´s duty!!What a really great city Buenos Aires is, definitely a contender for a place in the top 10 of the world - out of the cities I've seen anyway.
The city itself Firstly, it's absolutely massive - I've heard that the greater BA area has in excess of 14 million "Porteños" (pron. por-tay-nyos) as the inhabitants of BA call themselves. The centre, which most tourists probably only venture out of to visit one of the city's nightclubs, is compact and extremely easy to navigate - the streets (narrow) and boulevards (wide) are arranged in a logical grid system, with each city block having numbers in a set range (i.e. 200-299) the next being 300-399 etc. - this makes navigation very simple indeed as long as you have at least a basic map.
It's divided (in a cultural sort of way, not physical) into ¨barrios¨ (areas) that represent the differing population influences over the city's history. For instance, the San Telmo barrio where we spent a lot of our time was reputed for it's bars, restaruants, cosy neghbourhood feel, and antiques/curio market amongst other things!
Buenos Aires is a mixture of many influences (mainly European immigrant) from Italy, Spain, France
Atypical San Telmo
A bar, a restaurant, nobody knows and Eastern Europe - with a healthy dose of good British engineering and construction to polish things off - the massive docks (old and new), and the subway (Subte) line 1 are both British-built along with surely many other things.
The boulevards unashamedly copy those of Paris and the tango singing is Spanish with a French accent.
The way of driving is definitely Italian, the language is Spanish (of course), and the building architecture is a mixture of the whole lot - giving the city a ¨I´ve been here before but can´t quite place it¨ feel.
So what did we get up to? We first arrived by aeroplane to Buenos Aires on the 15th of December. We were welcomed by a downpour and grey skies, but that was to prove a little out-of-character. I've dated the article 30th December because that's when we
really arrived there - on the 15th we had one night before catching the plane to El Calafate, but we liked the city (and Argentina) very quickly after visiting one of the many ¨Parillas¨ (steak houses) just around the corner. For once our Lonely Planet guidebook came up trumps and for about 4 pounds each we
The Casa Rosada
The English translation is "The Pink House" - not quite so many syllables, or anywhere near as pleasing to the ear. I suppose, a bit like English! had the best steaks ever (drinks, fries included). It was very yummy and boded well.
We also passed through Buenos Aires (like a south American tummy bug) on the 22nd of December on our way to Uruguay which we achieved the next day. The hostel we stayed in that time was pretty average and the only major acomplishment I have noted is that we spent some time weblogging ¨a bit¨.
Really arriving in BA So, we properly got to BA, after our brief visit to Uruguay (which of course you can read about in other entries), on the 30th of December 2004. The fast ferry from Colonia dropped us at the port and we took a taxi to the V&S Hostal (where we stayed on the 15th) only to find that they'd messed up our booking and we had no bed there for the night. Longstoryshort we ended up in an associated hostel in the San Telmo area (remember from before?) called Ostenatto (Chile St, No. 680). It´s in an amazing 6-storey building with incredibly high ceilings, and a central shaft down the middle with walkways crossing on each level at angles - really cool design. It has a
The Eva Peron Speech Balcony
In fact we haven´t got a clue which balcony it was, but this was the nicest one so this is what you get. large kitchen and roomy dorms, some with balconies so you can watch the daily business of the local residents, and to boot it´s on a quiet enough street with all the local amenities nearby.
We got there and settled by midday, and decided we needed to do some sorting out - washing, emailing, weblogging - that sort of thing.
Later that afternoon we met with some people from Israel, and that evening we had a few drinks and ended up having a late night at one of the clubs in town - pretty uneventful, other than to say the bars in nightclubs have this stupid system where you have to pay to get a ticket and then get your drink - queuing twice for one drink. They really do like to imitate the Brits.
NYE 2004 The previous night, the same night we'd been out clubbing, there had been a terrible fire in another nightclub in Buenos Aires. Someone in a crowd watching a rock band had set off a flare (stupidly) which had ignited insulation in the ceiling. Almost 200 people died mainly from smoke inhalation - the fire exits were chained shut.
This national tragedy prompted an
Old crane thing in La Boca
Not used now, but makes a great landmark. By the way, La Boca means, literally "mouth" because the La Boca area is at the mouth of the river. So there. official declaration of 3 days of mourning (City-wide) and all nightclubs and organised parties were cancelled - we were disappointed but understood. Well, we did anyway. After countless New Year disappointments this was just another to add to the list! At least we could donate the money we saved to try and help some tsunami victims.
A bit of sightseeing Anyway, I´m getting ahead of myself - earlier in the day we set about sightseeing, walking from San Telmo to the "microcentro" area, and the Plaza de Mayo where the very famous "Casa Rosada" president´s house is located - the scene of Evita´s famous balcony address to the crowds below. The streets were eerily deserted - many porteños leave BA for mid-summer (sensibly) as it gets very humid and hot and stays hot until about 2am - the usual going-out time. I also read in the paper that they use about 3billion million jigawatts of electricity on air conditioning too. Doesen´t surprise me - I think they´re as bad as the Yanks on that front.
That evening we had a meal and some drinks at the hostal with the owner, some of his friends, the staff, and the
Sarah and "La Bombonera"
"The Bonbon Box" is Boca Juniors´ stadium - suck on that, footy fans! other guests - a nice do all in all. At 3am Sarah and I decided to go for a walk and ended up at a plaza in San Telmo where hundreds of people were drinking at tables in the plaza in a very civilised fashion. We got a jug of sangria and shared it with a chap from the area who didn´t appear to have any friends, and joined in when a troupe of 3 drummers (apparently from Uruguay for the style of drumming) arrived and got everyone jumping about - funky stuff, was that drumming.
So really it was a rather subdued NYE and rightly so, we had a good time nevertheless and weren´t too trashed or poor the next day. In many ways it was perfect!
NYDay 2005 We called home to do the usual NYD business, then took the Subte (short for subterranean) to the Recoletta cemetary - home of the tomb of Eva Peron (Evita). We wandered around and saw the tomb, and took a picture or two - it´s just like Highgate cemetary (London) but much more cramped and with less (no) greenery. So maybe not much like Highgate after all. Oh well I
The Obelisk in Avenida 9 July
Big stone thing in the middle of a very wide road. was trying to give you an idea of what it´s like.
Hmmm, maybe a cramped network of stone tombs with lots of cats, how´s that?
The Recoletta cemetary is in the barrio of Recoletta - the posh bit of BA - so we wandered down to a street that was meant to be really posh and I didn´t think it was that posh really - but then again you can´t really see all the million dollar penthouses and apartments from the street, can you?
We took a taxi back to the hostal and later on went to a different area and had a nice meal in another area of the city.
Ever heard of the Boca Juniors? Well, surprisingly I had - but had no idea of anything about them, apart from that they were a football team. Well I found out they play in a famous stadium in Buenos Aires - and coupled with the fact that La Boca is another must-see area of Buenos Aires, we decided to head on down there on the 2nd.
We decided to walk there from our hostal as the only way to really get a feel fo a city is is
Child, in bucket of water, eating ice cream
This picture´s great! She´s definitely got the right idea - it was a bloody hot day, even for Buenos Aires!!!! to walk places, and after about an hour we reached the riverfront bit where the touristy things are. On the way we encountered some interesting art, of which I shall endeavour to put a picture up. We had a quiet lunch of picada (finger foods) for two, and then headed up to the Boca Juniors stadium and did the tour. It's a really tiny stadium but they cram 45,000 in to it and the fans are literally 3 feet from the pitch in places - it´s a real cauldron on match day. We got a BA bus (clean, efficient) back and prepared for our Tango show, which we had booked that morning.
Fabulous Tango! From our Time Out guide (which we can´t praise enough - it really was excellent) we chose the "up close and authentic place where the locals go" tango venue, "El Viejo Almacen" (The Old Almacen). We went in and sat down at our table just feet from the stage as the place filled up with Argentines (and an elderly English couple to our left) before we were wowed with a really excellent two-hour show of great Tango music, singing (in that French accent I mentioned)
Cleaning up after the big "cleanout"
The tradition in BA is to throw out all your old office paper at New Year - so the streets were absolutely covered in bits of paper! and, of course, the Tango dancing itself - which was all things at different times, including sensual and downright acrobatic, to just-plain-great choreography and perfect timing.
Very hard to describe just how good it is, but we pitied the fools we talked to who decided against a Tango show whilst in Buenos Aires. Where else on the Earth are you going to see one if not the home of it?!
Shame on them, and shame on you if you give up the chance to experience this great city, if indeed you have the chance, at least once in your life.
(and I will confess now, that after seeing the Tango show, we were intimidated into passing up Tango lessons - shame on us!)
The Third On the 3rd of Jan we walked back to the Plaza de Mayo (the centre of the city), and looked around the Museo de La Casa Rosada (Pink House Museum - remember the Evita balcony) which is vaguely interesting and full of the obligatory old hats and shiny silver things from the country´s past. We walked along the two massive pedestrianised streets near the microcentro - they should SO do that with Oxford Street
New Year´s Eve 2004
No caption, thanks but I´ll have a glass of Champagne in London - it´s great! We then walked to Buenos Aires´ rather unfitting defining monument - the giant obelisk on 9th of July Avenue (widest street in the world) before doing a few other bits of sightseeing and then heading back for a relatively quiet night.
The Fourth On tuesday we did a bit of admin stuff, not really worthy of the blog, and caught the 7.45 night bus to Mendoza - in the heart of Argentina´s wine-growing region.
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anonymous
non-member comment
buenos aires
i hade been there and .it is a great city ,i agree with you - aydil