Buenos Aires (Argentina)
28 March - 06 April 2015
Our home in Buenos Aires was a great apartment on Humberto Primo,
literally on the doorstep of Plaza Dorrego, a place where for me I believe that a
person can find the essence of this city. On Sundays the plaza, and the avenue
that it sidles up against (Avenida Defensa), comes alive with the chatter of
people through its markets, the sounds of tango and the movement of people in
dance, cafes filled with Portenos and tourists alike, parillas filling the air
with the aromas of all sorts of grilled meat, the clinking of glasses filled
with Malbec and the unique sound of Argentinian Spanish. For me it felt somehow
important that Inga fall for Buenos Aires the same way that I did and the only
way I could think of doing that was to throw the wall of Buenos Aires straight
at her on arrival. Walking through the throngs on Defensa, heading up to Plaza
de Mayo and admiring the uniquely coloured Casa Rosada, walking Avenida Pres.Roque
Saenz Pena and being pulled into the central vortex of the city as represented
by the Obelisco de Buenos Aires, an historical monument located at the
intersection of Corrientes and Avenida 9 de Julio. This to me is how I believe a city can be truly experienced but especially a place like BA where walking the streets
really allows you to feel the vibrancy and its pace of life. As
I’ve commented many times before in this blog, I often find the best way of
getting to know a city is to just walk, to go, explore and discover, whether
that be with a certain intent or wandering aimlessly in the hope of acquiring
those ‘happy’ accidental discoveries. I was more than happy that with Inga her
modus was similar to mine, although I found out very quickly that she adopted the
exhausting principal of ‘walk until you
drop’, mitigated by only by the fact that refreshment stops for us both
were for the most part cocktail sessions somewhere in the city. An outsider
viewing our movements could quite easily have been fooled into thinking that
our journey through this metropolis was nothing more than an extravagant bar
crawl!
28 March - 06 April 2015
The question I get asked by all and sundry is ‘What is it about Buenos Aires’? In the immediate moments after I hear the question I always find myself in that inevitable space of having to fumble for the appropriate verbs and adjectives, I simultaneously berate myself for not ever having developed a stock answer, but now, with the equivalent lucidity of a man that’s consumed three glasses of Malbec and has hit that ‘sweet zone’ of temporary enlightenment, I figure that I don’t ever really need to have one. The question is about as complex as answering ‘why are you in love?’, I mean how do you formulate an answer and provide a significant amount of justice to the weight of that feeling? I know that I can frame the response in terms of what initially drew me in, which was the steak, red wine and its vibrancy of life, but that’s basic talk, that’s just Buenos Aires 101 for the newbie. I could then add something about its energy, passion, lifestyle, architecture, sense of style, sense of self, nightlife, the cobble stoned streets of San Telmo, café con leche and medialunas in Dorrego Bar, the roar of the crowd in La Bombonera, the dog walkers handling 10 dogs at a time on the tree lined streets of Palermo, watching the afternoon sun light up the buildings with a glorious burnt orange hue over Puerto Madero, walking Defensa on market day, sipping cocktails and feeling the buzz of Plaza Serrano, looking at the uniquely framed Punta de la Mujer, infiltrating a cross fit class in the parks surrounding Madero, empanadas, dulce de leche, having three bites of walking across Avenida 9 de Julio, not grasping the weird locks of our apartment on Humberto Primo, talking about going to a tango show, actually going to a tango show…you see, the point ends up becoming so irrelevant because in the end it all rests within the realm of my own personal connection with the city and how this place makes me feel. That’s something that I can’t convey in it's entirety, you can’t simply give that to somebody, you can only hope that someone else gets the chance to have that experience and also, perhaps, feel the same sort of thing as you do. So when Inga’s flight touched down at Ezeiza on the 29th of March all I was hoping was that this town would somehow permeate her pores and pass on that same vibrant energy that had mesmerised me for so long.
San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Sunrise in San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Obelisco de Buenos Aires - Avenida Corrientes - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Puerto Madero panorama - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Drinks on Plaza Serrano - Palermo - Buenos Aires - Argentina
When you front up to the starting line of a 3.5 month adventure you
convince yourself that you have all the time in the world, whilst at the same time secretly
whispering to yourself, in your 'other' internal voice, ‘yeah
but time will pass us by so quickly’, and you know in yourself that you’re
right. This adventure originated from an idea that was formulated in Paris, that
when said out aloud at the time sounded like pure fantasy, and yet as I drifted
through the now familiar streets of San Telmo, there I stood, in another city, on
another continent, Inga in situ and me waiting for us to started.
The decision for both of us to do this was a huge roll of the dice on
both parts. Travelling with friends, family members, partners, etc can be fraught
with danger. The traps are an ever present reality. Spending so much time in
the company of one another can quickly undo a relationship and turn it into a
pile of rubble, but with that said, where there is risk there is also the
chance for an equally large reward. So as I waited at the overcrowded arrival
gates of Ezeiza airport and spotted that familiar face in a very foreign crowd
all I was able to say when she approached was ‘hey, look at you’, not the most profound opening line of all time but at least I had time on my side to be able to improve on that!
Corridor entrance to our apartment - Humberto Primo - San Telmo - Buenos Aires
Our apartment - Humberto Primo - San Telmo - Buenos Aires
Gardelito, Defensa on a Sunday, he's just such a part of the city. This is the personification of San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina
If it's a glass of Malbec then it must be Argentina - Puerto Madero - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Love this place - Dorrego Bar - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina
'Seriously Mafalda!?' - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina
The 30th of March brought with it an important milestone for
Inga, her 30th birthday. It was this date and of course the 2nd
of July, my 40th, which essentially provided the bookends to our
intended South American adventure. It was these two dates that we selected
months ago as being ones that we wanted both wanted to celebrate in this town.
So, as opposed to the previous day where we experienced Buenos Aires on the
street, I thought that, post morning champagne celebration, which also involved
some extreme skill on my part where I caught the flying rebound of the champagne
cork off the living room wall (trust me,
it looked impressive), that we head out to the heliport at San Isidro and take
to the air in order to gain some vertical perspective of what is the second largest
metropolitan area in South America after Sao Paulo.
Somewhere over the Rio de la plata - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Puerto Madero from the air - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Looking back now, several months
removed from where it started, you realise that in writing at ‘arms length’, the
location of where a place resides in your mind is always punctuated by the
moments that you carry in your memory for what and how those moments made you feel. I do
recall on one particular evening whilst taking a walk through the parks
surrounding Puerto Madero that we encountered a cross fit group mid-session. What’s
fantastic about this area and I guess about Portenos in general is that they
enjoy getting out and doing things, now that may be in the guise of going to
cafes, restaurants and bars, or as in this instance, keeping fit. Puerto Madero
of an evening is filled with inline bladers, runners, meandering couples and
fitness groups, something that we of course intended to be a part of. So with
the stealth and deft touch of a blind elephant in a China shop, we infiltrated
one of these groups by mimicking exercises from the safe distance of 5 mtrs,
because as a foreigner, you know, you’ll never be spotted with your cloak of
invisibility!? Sure enough, within seconds the instructor was calling us out
and beckoning us to join in, without a second thought Inga does and enters the
fray and of course I follow. Now, I don’t want to say that the gringo ring-ins
showed the Portenos of Puerto Madero a thing or two about exercise, but yeah,
we absolutely owned them!
'El Che' mural - Carlos Calvo - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Mothers of the disappeared mural - La Boca - Buenos Aires - Argentina
El caminito - La Boca - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Estadio Monumental - Belgrano- Buenos Aires
Estadio Monumental - Belgrano- Buenos Aires
Drinks at Floreria Atlantico - Retiro - Buenos Aires - Argentina
When you think of Buenos Aires
there are places and things that immediately come to mind, places that
punctuate your consciousness, but in the same way these places and events are
unique in the manner in which you experience them. So when I think of us in San
Telmo I remember the mural of ‘El Che’ on pasaje San Lorenzo, the accompanying
words which I now know to say ‘For love,
use a condom’ or I think of
wandering the multi-coloured streets of La Boca and El Caminito and remembering
that greater than the vibrant colour was the acquisition of the best Pisco
Sours in the whole of South America ( we
didn’t know it at the time but our extensive testing over three months was
definitive, Buenos Aires (La Boca) owned the title even though Chile and Peru
disputed intellectual property rights) or I think of the inspired 3am suggestion by Inga whilst lying in
bed that going out for drinks would be a much better way of passing our time
(and I had to agree) or I think of
rocking up to the well known restaurant of La Brigada in San Telmo well after
midnight and the waiters responding almost incredulously to our question of
whether they were still open ‘…but of
course we’re open’…but of course we repeat to ourselves, this is Buenos Aires
and this is where a so much living is done between the hours of midnight and
6am. This is a town where you can walk into a florist, waltz passed a very
non-descript door and descend stairs to one of the coolest bars in town (I’m looking at you Floreria Atlantico) but it’s also a town where old school charm is
still maintained and none better than within the four walls of the well known Café
Tortoni. It’s a city of passion, as encountered by our trip to Estadio
Monumental where one bright April afternoon we caught the local derby between
River Plate and their inner city rivals San Lorenzo, and it’s a city of
culinary delights, mostly of the carne persuasion, as typified by our visits to
Don Ernesto, La Brigada and Desnivel but more importantly highlighted by our expert
opinion which of them had the best chimichurri (The most necessary of condiments in Argentina – and - It was Desnivel by
the way). The ‘key’ to feeling a city, this city, is to immerse yourself
the best way you can in whatever it has to offer, and sometimes, if both you and the city are on the
same wavelength then something magical can happen. Buenos Aires to me is some
place that I have to feel and not just see, and, far more importantly I think, one of those rare places that even though it isn't home it
somehow still allows me to feel at home, and if I mayspeak for Inga also, I think
it’s a place that she fell for in the same manner as I have and did again. Why and how that
happened is not so important as the fact that it did and the fact that I really
hoped that it would. Buenos Aires never ever seems to disappoint and is always
able to give so much, this occasion was certainly no exception and for that,
Buenos Aires, we say ‘Muchas gracias!’.
We were there! It says so!! Don Ernesto - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina
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