It´s been a while but we have been too busy to keep the blog up to date. Buenos Aires is officially our new favorite city in the world and we would certainly recommend it to everyone. It has everything you could possibly want and more! I think I will just run through some of the highlights from the past 6 days........
San Telmo Markets - Amazing amount to antiques from jewelry to masses of old soda bottle, art work, books, old vinal record and incredible magazines and comics. There were brilliant funky vintage clothing shops and loads of places selling amazing chandeliers at dirt cheap prices. I could have furnished hundreds of houses. Our time at the market was somewhat cut short as we rushed to get to a certain big football match. You can guess my amusement levels!!
So the football was good, although in my opinion it looked as though the players all had lead boots on and Nigel thought it was, ´rather second division!´ The atmosphere however was awesome. 75,000 people all waving flags, throwing streamers and ticket tape and chanting and jumping. It was brilliant. The away fans were above us and generally were quiet, despite the abuse being called up to them, until they started ripping the seats out and throwing them over the balcony at the people below. We met a guy who had been to a match the week before at a different stadium. He had been spat on all through the match, by the away supporters above. I guess we were lucky!! Anyway our team won and we avoided any real violence as the fans were led out separately. Later we found out that the week before 2 people had been killed in a riot in the stadium!!!
´The cementario de la recoleta´ was incredible. This is were all the rich and famous have been buried over that last few hundred years. Tombs the size of small houses contain the remains of Presidents, Military Heros and influencial Politicians. There are hundreds of them in a large area. Quite eery but incredible.
The most brilliant evening was definitely at ´La Bomba De Tiempo´. Set in a kind of disused open warehouse area, about the size of a cricket pitch, hundreds of people gathered to listen to a group of percussionists create the most awesome music. A conductor leads a group of about 12, and using hand signals, sometimes hitting different parts of his body, he directed each musician to maintain, vary and develop a rhythm that he improvised as he went along. The crowd were brilliant and you couldn´t help but jump and dance to the music, although maybe we were helped by the compulsory passive pot smoking. There was one little boy who was about 3, sitting on his Dad´s shoulders and holding a straw in one hand was bashing out the beats on his Dad´s head. It was brilliant.
As promised, an update on the Tango........... well we did attend a class, and we did go home with between us, all 4 feet in tact. I can´t say we were very good and we only walked away from each other on the dance floor, in despair, once! It is really difficult and definitely needs a lot of practice. We had a ´Dirty Dancing´ moment trying to respect each others space and certainly never progressed passed the counting and getting cross with each other phase!!! One to work on!!!
Oh and on that note, rollerblading...... Oh my goodness, so difficult! We had a go and having hired them for half and hour, were almost laughed off them by the spectators. We didn´t fall over but hardly stayed up and were definitely defeated by the speed bump!! More practice needed!!
So other than the above, we did loads more excellent shopping, ate masses more delicious food and generally really enjoyed being in such a diverse, friendly and awesome city.
Pics to come!!!
