I can’t believe we spent a full eight days in Buenos Aires and are already on to our second leg of the trip in Uruguay — and that our time in Montevideo is already over! Since I have so much to say (or I guess, type?) about the end of our BA portion of the trip, I’ll save Montevideo for a separate post.

City skyline from the Japanese gardens

On Wednesday, we started the day with a visit to the Jardin Japones — the Japanese Gardens of Buenos Aires, built by the Japanese Argentine Cultural Foundation in the 1960’s. The gardens had a similar feel to the Chinese gardens and temples I visited in Beijing on my Northeastern Dialogue of Civilizations trip, and it was a bit strange to have sudden flashbacks to my 5 weeks spent in China while in the middle of Argentina. Regardless, the gardens are a beautiful green space, plus it’s always fun to see a Koi pond!

From there we walked up through Palermo to the MALBA museum, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires. The museum is half price on Wednesdays, and students (I may still take advantage of my Husky ID) are free, which was a nice break from the rather pricey entrance and tour fees we’ve been paying throughout BA. Coincidentally, the museum had a beautiful exhibit entitled Bye Bye American Pie, featuring seven American artists of the late 1900’s: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Cady Noland y Paul McCarthy. I’d never seen work from any of the artists, and I was lucky enough that there were English translations of almost all the descriptions so I could understand everything. I particularly loved the work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, an expressionist painter who died in 1988, at the age of 27, of a drug overdose. His work — combinations of everything from elephant drawings, repeated words written in pencil and crossed out in bright paint colors, and messages of African American history — was thought provoking, bizarre and absolutely captivating, and I truly enjoyed it.

Larry Clark‘s photographs were a bit harder to stomach — many of them were raw images that involved heavy drug use in rural America. It was interesting to think about the way America was being depicted to South Americans, but also interesting to think about the prevalent drug use in our country, especially during the 70’s and 80’s.

Erica met up with us and we left the museum to grab lunch a few blocks away, walking through the beautiful tree-shaded streets of northern Palermo, lined with huge, beautiful houses. A stark contrast to yesterday’s La Boca visit, but great to see nonetheless. I had my first tortilla — not a tortilla at all, but a Latin American version of a frittata, made with eggs, potatoes and onions. Heavy, but delicious!

After another hour and a half or so checking out the other MALBA exhibits, we wandered back toward our hostel, stopping for a delicious helado on the way. Buenos Aires has particularly good ice cream — their mascarpone flavor is to die for. I hadn’t realized what a heavy influence Italy had on South American countries, particularly in cuisine. I didn’t expect to see so much pizza and pasta!

Erica went to an architecture expo and we took a bit of a break at the B&B, then met up again to head to La Catedral — a tango milonga in an 1880’s warehouse that originally served as a silo and dairy factory.

I’m almost a loss for words to describe the La Catedral decor — one part raw and rustic, another vintage and eclectic. Mismatched tables and chairs filled the back third of the room behind the dance floor, and sofas and chairs with ripped cushions, stuffing popping out of several corners, line the walls. Artwork hangs in every available space on the 20′ walls. Bare, colored lightbulbs are wrapped precariously on a wire circle and hung directly above the dance floor, and aside from a few kitchen bulbs, a controlled spotlight, and the glow from the candles on the tables, provide the only light. My photos don’t do the space justice, since the dim light made it hard to capture, but here are a few:

A dozen couples, including the two tango teachers who we saw teaching the end of a lesson when we first arrived, took turns heating up the dance floor. Our variety of empanadas — chicken and cheese, pumpkin, caprese, and vegetable — were so good they practically melted in our mouths. Between the incredible tango dancing, live music and delicious Malbec we were drinking, I felt like I was truly experiencing Argentine culture.

Thursday we began the day in San Telmo on Defensa Street, the same avenue where the market was set up last Sunday, and where I happened to fall in love with a gorgeous leather jacket being sold by Diego, an older gentleman who owns “En la Escalera” — a leather pop-up shop that consists of a small display of beautiful jackets on a random set of stairs, tucked behind a huge metal door. Of course, he didn’t have in the right size/color combination I wanted, but luckily was very sweet and told me to be in touch later in the week. When I emailed him on Wednesday to see if he had gotten one in stock, I was in luck! He told us to come by between 12 and 2, and when we got there we discovered he had even written a special sign with my name telling me to ring the bell. He let us in and let me try on the jacket, stare at myself in the mirror, debate with Alison and Carolyn for entirely too long, and even held a lighter to the jacket to prove it wasn’t synthetic or plastic (I had never heard of this test before, but it made sense to us and seems to be legitimate) before I finally forked over my 600 pesos. Long story short: I’m obsessed with my gorgeous, fitted, black leather jacket and so glad I splurged!

With my wallet feeling very empty but my nose filled with the scent of leather (I obviously put the jacket on that moment and refused to take it off the rest of the day), we meandered San Telmo, perused a few shops and stumbled upon a galleria — a large, open building with dozens of small store fronts selling antiques and all sorts of chachkies. When Carolyn spotted a pair of beautiful gold earrings and a large collection of hand painted toy soliders in a display, we began talking to the seller, an older, heavy-set gentleman with Italian heritage.

Our new best friend showing Carolyn the various soldier figurines

We ended up at his storefront for almost 45 minutes — he pulled out an old map and gave Alison a history lesson on Chilean-Argentine relations and colonial borders of South America. He showed us an old fashioned stamp holder (which we mistook for an earring display), let us marvel at his collection of pocket watches, for which he had a half dozen beautiful stands and holders, and even took out a dozen of the lead, hand painted toy soliders to explain to us their different uniforms and what part of Argentine history they came from.

Carolyn purchased three of the soliders as souvenirs and then we went for lunch at one of the historic cafes in San Telmo. The special of the day — a chicken, onion and bell pepper mixture that they were calling a stew but wasn’t really, served over rice — was the perfect hearty meal to warm us up, as a serious chill had set in when a cloud cover hid the sun.

We took the metro back to our area of town and did a bit more perusing of stores on Corrdoba Ave, where Alison bought a beautiful coral-colored floor length skirt.  Then we went back to our B&B to quickly change before heading to the Teatro Colôn to see the Buenos Aires Philharmonic perform. The theatre is stunningly beautiful inside and is six levels, with balconies lined along the edge of each of the levels. Our seats had a partial view so we had to lean a bit over the railing to see the orchestra, but it was a wonderful performance, and so nice to be able to enjoy beautiful classical music, even in a country where I don’t speak the language.

From there we went to dinner at La Peña del Colorado, a venue that puts on live folk music shows. We arrived at the end of the show so we only caught a few songs, but after devouring our quinoa salads we grabbed our bottle of wine and went to the back room, where a few musicians had invited us to listen to them play. They passed around guitars, a Chilean woman sang her heart out, and our new friend Diego played bluegrass on his fiddle. They alternated between conversation, soulful ballads and upbeat songs — a handful of other people joined the festivities, some playing instruments, others just listening and clapping. It was incredible to see the emotion the men and women played their instruments with, and despite getting back to our hostel at nearly 3 AM for just three hours of sleep before getting up to catch our 8 AM ferry to Uruguay, it was well worth the exhaustion!