30 Days in Buenos Aires – The Greatest Hits

Writing a retrospective about our month in Buenos Aires is a challenge. Being there was more of a comfortable, everyday thing. Our lives slipped quickly on to its track, we moved to its rhythms – now here, 30 days later, it’s difficult to look back and see those elements that seemed so surprising and so strange. It’s also complicated to devise a narrative about it – Lucy and I lived fairly separate lives during the middle two weeks: I at the easel, preparing works for consideration against a scholarship, and Lucy at spanish school and developing a social life.

Buenos Aires was almost overwhelmingly “comfortable”. We had very little trouble getting the hang of the city, which makes it all the more complicated to write about. At the end of the month, you can’t really feel the same about those surprising moments along the way – they simply become the rhythms of your day. Facing this, we’ve decided to break our post into 3 parts: a touristic greatest hits, a social and personal commentary, and of course, one about food.

This is the first one…

Biking Buenos Aires

One of our wedding gifts was a magnificent tour of the city with Biking Buenos Aires (thank you!). The guys that run it are, oddly enough, Colorado boys. 7 hours of biking, eating, and drinking mate in the most famous neighborhoods in the city made an excellent primer for her month we would spend in the Argentine Capitol.

The Teatro Colon

Like much of the rest of the city, the Teatro Colon is an elegant mishmash of European influences. I think it makes a wonderful analogy for the city itself: at the time of its creation, it was designed to express the civility and means of the rising upper class, and it did this by using Europe as an aesthetic role model for its construction. Though we had always intended to take a tour of the historic theater, we did ourselves one better and dressed up for a night to the symphony’s excellent Beethoven program.

La Boca

It always comes up – La Boca is “that” neighborhood in BA with the colorful buildings. It’s also the neighborhood with the aggressive solicitation and no real remaining soul. It’s said that the block that makes up the colorful center of La Boca is kept up as a “living museum”, but most would say its a tourist trap was a rough neighborhood that surrounds it. Still, quite lively, quite colorful, and it’s just one of those things you kind of have to do,

Recolleta Cemetary

Usually at the top of people’s lists for must see sights in BA is this remarkable city of tombs. It’s said that maintenance for one of these plots will run as much as 6 million dollars for 10 years, though its also very possibly an exaggeration. True or not, Recolleta is extremely opulent for a final resting place, featuring some of the most costly and remarkable tombs and statuary for some of the most wealthy and powerful people ever to live (and die) in this city.

San Telmo Street Fair

Every weekend, this huge street fair winds down the cobblestone streets of San Telmo. Once the home of the very wealthy, whom it is said abandoned their mansions during a yellow fever epidemic, it is now populated with avenue after avenue of antiques shops, which actually sell the abandoned belongings of those fleeing wealthy.

Tigre Delta

An hour north of the city by train lies the riverside community of Tigre. When we first heard about it, we assumed it was kind of a more primitive community of river folk. Nope, actually it was considerably wealthy, with rowing clubs and gorgeous houses lining the many tributaries of the river… Though, some of them were sliding slowly into the water. Tigre is also the home of a small Mate museum, which is a remarkably strong subject of interest between Lucy and I.

Central Buenos Aires

It’s bizarre seeing these 17th century looking French buildings with giant LED cola ads on them, all the while, the massive iconic monolith looks over 9 lanes of traffic… but that’s Buenos Aires!