Buenos Aires, Part Three: Return to Buenos Aires

We stayed in Palermo for the last three nights of our trip. The hostel was REALLY weird. Our room was through a hole in the ceiling and was giant. It had a really good view.

That night we had sushi. One of my favorite foods. A food not available in Bariloche. Bariloche has steak. We had sushi three more times. It was really good.

Friday morning we walked around Palermo and saw the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, or the MALBA. It was my favorite thing we saw in Buenos Aires. I snuck pictures of some art. There weren’t any signs that said I couldn’t.

We also encountered a phenomenon Lonely Planet says is common in Palermo, the paseoperros, or professional dog walker. We saw two of them.

 

That's a lot of dog poop.

Friday afternoon Zig had a meeting with the Fulbright Commission, Argentina branch. I took a nap in the waiting room.  Zig said the meeting was really funny because the lady seemed to have no idea how long he has been here, what his project is, or even that they had already sent him money.

Friday night, our Italian friend Davide arrived at the hostel. He had one night in Buenos Aires on his way back to Italy. He was counting down the hours so he could fit in as much partying as possible. Someone invited us to a party. It started at 1am, the usual start time for Argentinean parties.  Zig really thought we were going to go until about 11pm when he got tired.  I suspected that would happen.

Saturday morning we got on the bus to La Boca. Everyone warned us that it would be super dangerous, and that you can’t leave the tourist street, Caminito. We got all prepared to be instantly mugged when exiting the bus. While it certainly wasn’t safe, the tourist street is REALLY touristy. When we arrived and saw five giant tour buses pulling up, we knew there was nothing to be worried about.

 

The Caminito was really pretty. Sol (my other Spanish teacher) said the buildings are painted pretty colors because they used the leftovers from boats painted in the adjacent harbor.  It used to be a slum for Italian immigrants. Now it’s a prime tourist attraction and place to hawk Argentinean souvenirs.

Traveling trick:  Find someone with larger camera than yours to take your picture.  Then they won't steal your dinky one.

Caminito was the home of Benito Quinquela Martin, a famous Argentinean artist who painted scenes of La Boca’s port. The museum was closed, but someone had recreated some of his works on the walls of the Caminito.

Look! It’s Evita and Che Guevera at the same time! Amazing.

This type of house is called a Conventillo. At first, they were houses for the original porteños (the word for people from Buenos Aires). Then those people got rich and moved onto bigger and fancier things, leaving the houses to be divided up into as many rooms as possible for immigrants.

Conventillo is a Lunfardo word. Lunfardo is a type of slang in Buenos Aires. From what I gather, Lunfardo is to Spanish as Ebonics is to English in the sense that just because you speak Spanish doesn’t mean you understand Lunfardo, but you might be able to figure it out. Or like whatever it is they speak in Boston. 

Mafalda was there....

This is the best picture I could get of La Bonbonera out of the bus window (see the blue and yellow thing in the distance?). It’s where the world famous Boca Juniors play. I tried to get Zig to go to a fútbol game (they have tours where they safely shuffle gringos in and out, keeping them away from the violent soccer hooligans), but he was too scared. He said in Mexico they pee in bottles and throw them at you when they get excited, and he didn’t want to have that happen. Wuss.

  

 

For lunch we went to a Hare Krishna restaurant in Palermo. The second one I’ve been too (the first was in Prague), and just as tasty.  I loved the koolaid... just kidding.
 

Next we went to Recoleta. We saw the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, which was a really nice museum except that the whole first floor was full of European Art, which was not really what I wanted to see. The second floor was much better and had only Argentinean art.

Behind the museum they have a giant flower... A humongous flower... A gargantuan flower.  It’s really flippin big.

Apparently, it opens and shuts with the sun, and rotates to face the sun depending on the season. It was constructed by Lockheed Martin. That’s pretty sweet.

We saw the Escuela de Derecho, or Law school. Also really big. You can see the flower dwarfed behind it.  They must do some serious stuff in there.

The thing everyone says you’re supposed to do is see Recoleta Cemetary, but by the time we got there we were really tired and didn’t feel like it. So I took I picture through a gate and another of what we could see over the wall. It looked a lot like Pere Lachaise in Paris. Sorry Argentina. Next time. They aren’t going anywhere.

After that we went back to Palermo. It was 8pm. Too early for dinner, so I decided to get my haircut, since obviously haircutting places stay open until 9pm. They put me in one of those dryer things. I don’t know why. Zig thought it was really funny. It was all going really well until the end when the guy started using a strange downward chopping motion with his scissors on sections of my hair. I decided to go with the flow and see what would happen. Nothing good. Now parts of my hair are a lot shorter than the other parts, and not in a cute, layered way. In a weird, a 5 year old cut my hair while I was asleep kind of way. Or like I tried to cut my own hair. It’s not terrible, but it’s definitely not good.  At least I can count on my trusted stylist Robert to fix it when I return to Houston. And I have 8 months to grow it out. I need to start taking vitamins.

  

 

Sunday was our last day. Our bus left at 4:30, so we spent the morning in San Telmo. They have a giant antiques market on Sundays. There was lots of cool stuff, but seeing as I don’t have a house to put it in, I refrained.

Look! Mafalda was here too!!!! She gets around.

San Telmo is the original Buenos Aires, so everything looks real old.  It was built for rich people, but they moved out (I think to Recoleta) because the close quarters were causing disease. So then less rich people moved in.  It’s supposed to be the birthplace of tango as well.

We got home on Monday night and went to get the wee Helguita from Angel and Valeria’s. They made us pizza. It was good.

Also, I discovered that if you click on the pictures on my blog they get a LOT bigger. Sweet.

The End.