Buenos Aires, Argentina

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA!

There was a cannon, It seemed rude not to take a photo.

Evita or Vicky, who can say? Just don´t cry for me England........

Part 2 of our travels have begun the first destination being Buenos Aires in Argentina.

We booked to do a fortnight’s Spanish course at a language school and to do a home stay so that we could practice the lingo.

We got really lucky with the home stay. We stayed with a very nice lady (Betty) in her apartment close to the city centre. Betty loves art and music and is a very flamboyant, artsy character who is very kind and has loads of good tips on what to do in Buenos Aires. The location of her apartment was perfect, only 10 mins on the underground to the centre and within a couple minutes walk of a nice lively park full of people taking strolls, sunbathing, chatting or exercising. There were also loads of really nice restaurants, bars and ice cream shops nearby – perfect!

Vicky in Betty´s apartment

Our lessons were 5 mornings a week between 9am and 1pm. At the school, we both quickly concluded that it was a good job we didn’t actually ever go to school together as our approaches as students was so different we would have probably ended up sworn enemies than husband and wife. Phil was pretty much the school swot, very enthusiastic and eager for everyone to get it wrong so that he could correct their mistake (he denies this of course). I was the class clown pulling faces at Phil if he got the answer wrong. (I hate her! PB) I took great delight in the time I got the teacher to write on the board “Phil is not intelligent” (she was too nice to realize that my aim was mocking Phil rather than having a genuine interest in how negatives work). Of course, as the class clown I didn’t learn much whereas Phil did really well and is far better at Spanish than me.

At the school we also met lots of nice people who we explored Buenos Aires with. The city is fantastic. I loved it – reminded me of Paris. It’s a very lively places with lots of culture. The city is huge and like all great cities has lots of different quarters each with their own unique look and feel. There are so many restaurants, bars and cafes you’d need a year to explore properly (although we gave it a pretty good go in the fortnight we were there). You also need a lot of stamina in Buenos Aires. People would not even think of eating dinner before 9pm and usually it’s closer to 11pm. Things don’t close as long as people are eating or drinking which they do until the next morning.

It’s also the place where tango began so we went to see a show which was very good fun. The dancing was amazing but it’s the music that got me, so emotional and passionate – I loved it. We also had a tango lesson which was fun, but not the beginning of a change of career for either of us! A group of six of us from the school went. Actually we all went for a drink and then went to tango. I (Phil) ordered a beer which came in 1litre form. Thinking that the class started at 6pm I guzzled it in 15 minutes only to discover at 5:45 that the class wasn’t until 6:30. So I ordered a whiskey. I received one tumbler of whiskey. Or roughly 8 whiskeys. Tango was fun, hell I was drunk, most things are fun after a beer and 8 whiskey’s. We only really learned how to walk the basic steps and so sadly Vicky did not buy a skirt with a big split, or get her leg over my shoulder.

We make it look so effortless but this isn´t actually an easy tango move to do

How it should be done

I (Phil) Got a hair cut from the worlds fastest speaking half Italian half Argentinean barber living in Buenos Aires. He may actually be the only one, but he does talk like a machine gun loaded with Spanish “?seshamalacasaparadetagoshowestanoche” Get a word of that? Neither did I. Everything I understood came from the hairdresser at the next chair who was kind enough to repeat every word he said at a quarter of the pace. I got my first haircut with a razor blade ever (clippers are not popular with half Italian half Argentinean barbers) and learnt that he’s been here 54 years, that tango is good, that the tango show we’re going to tonight is top notch and that I can’t say the name of the place we’re going. ( I had to write it down for him in the end.) I was rather proud of my Spanish after leaving the barbers, I’d had the longest conversation so far and had actually managed to communicate and understand a few things. So I bought an ice cream to celebrate on the way home. Ordered vanilla ice cream, got raspberry sorbet. Gutted.....More work needed on the Spanish after all.

We also went to Tigre. It’s a little town in the river delta about an hour’s train ride from Buenos Aries. Cool place, there’s something inherently cool about having an address that starts with a number and a river name, because there are no roads. The whole place fills up with tourists at the weekend and there are big launches that drag them ( and us) up and down the river to see everyone’s house. Normally launches travel sedately, meandering their way along. These ones shoot along leaving 6 ft wakes behind them and regularly swamping the rowing boats that foolishly try to share the river. There are houses, hotels, camping grounds and beaches on the river edge. The locals stand in the beaches and wait for the boats to pass so they can play in the waves, it’s very like the wave pools at the swimming baths. We saw the presidents house which is encased in glass to keep the bullets and the humidity out. It’s the size of a shoebox and looks like a fairy tale house preserved forever in a glass case.

The tour guide (that’s right folks, we have sunk that low) took us to his favorite restaurant for lunch. He recommended the meat pizza (throw away the bread and replace it with meat, add toppings, tomato and cheese – meat pizza) he assured us that it was lovely and very tender. It was cow belly!!! I’ve never had cow belly before, and I’d guess you haven’t either. There’s a good reason for this, imagine pork belly, decrease the level of taste and increase the amount of fat, hey presto, cow belly. Then you cover it in cheese so you can't see the fat. It was tender, that much we concede, but then a lump of lard with cheese on top wasn’t likely to be chewy in an ambient temperature of 40 degrees was it?

Speaking of heat. It is HOT here. Vicky loves it, I hate it, I have that constant slightly damp feeling I normally associate with a fever, except without the chills. I spent 30mins in a cold bath of water last night and it made me the right temperature for about an hour. Then I woke up in a pool of sweat. There was a cool thunderstorm on Wednesday though. I sat up until 1am watching it, it was like daylight outside sometimes. One particularly bright flash woke Vicky up. Not understanding there was a thunderstorm going on, she blamed me for switching the lights on and gave me a ‘get you for that later’ look then turned over. Anyway the storm brought a cool breeze with it and I slept like a baby. It also washed all the dog crap off the pavement, I don’t know where it went, but there’s a lot less to step in now.

We also saw a Tango show in the street, visited lots of nice parks, a few markets, a modern art exhibition and went to La Boca which is a poor district historically full of immigrant sailors and with houses (tin sheds) painted with the leftover ship paints. We saw the balcony Evita sang from and then went to Recolletta which is a huge area in the middle of town filled with family toumbs. So we saw where Evita is entoumbed too. As it was a graveyard we were respectfull tourists and tried not to let anyone see us take photo's of each other pretending to be dead.

No, not us after our lesson, it´s actually tango street dancers!

This is us Tangoing in La Boca

More La Boca

All very good but we were ready for the next place after 2 weeks.