The Good Air of Buenos Aires, Argentina: Part II

All large cities, no matter how exotic they sound from a guidebook or armchair, share certain characgtferistics: they're big, often hot and dirty, noisy and crowded.  But some cities get classified as "wordl class"--like Buenas Aires, and when they get that classification, it's often easy to overlook some of their faults.  The good air of this crowded city provided me with more than ample opportunities.

Steve was here for a good chunk of the time. Together, we were turistas lunaticas--out of the apartment at noon and pounding the city's streets on foot, subte and taxi.  We'd arrive back home exhausted, but always satisfied.Buenos Aires has a museum for every day of the year.  There's even one dedicated to cheese, but we're only good for about 1.5 museums a week, so we'd spend most of our time ourxplorig the city's many parks and formal gardens--all of which are free and all of whice were in their full summer splendor. 

  The good air of Buenos Aires is a walker's dream.  We'd start twith "A" with "Z"in mind, then do an alphabetic meander, looking at everything there was to look at, to get to our destination.  Buenos Aires is well connected with an extensive bus system, so it was always easy to get from "Z" back home again.

What did we see in these meanderings?  The good air of Buenas Aires is loaded with lovely old 19th century Belle Epoque architecture blended in with great art deco architecture from the 1930's.  There were street markets and fantastic ice cream shops and restaurants all over the place.  It wasn't hard to spend a day just wandering.

Both of us like cemeteries, and the good air of Buenos Aires did not dissapoint.  Recoletta is the city's premier cemetary and major tourist site because it's where Eva Peron was laid to rest.  But it's packed with tourists, so we headed a bit out of town to Chacaritas, where thos less famous have been buried.  Well, buried isn't ther ight word.  There are literally streets and streets of mausoleums.  Porteno's--the residents of Buenos Aires--from the 19th century seemed to want to outdo each other.  What makes both of these cemeteries really interesting is that each mausoleum has a glass door and inside the mausoleum, for everyone to see, are stacks of coffins.  No where else in the world have I ever seen that.  It was almost as if the dead Portenos wanted to make a statement in the size and grandeur of their casket.  We even say workers inside mausoleums sweeping and polishing the brass.  All very cool.

About every fourth day we'd make an excursion out of the city.  One trip was north to the Uruguayan border town of Tigre.  It was a blistering hot day and we took advantage of an extended boat ride on the Parana Delta, hoping to see some of the wildlife our guidebook promised.  All we saw were other tourists.

Another day trip brought us to the serene littel town of San Antonia de Areca.  It was a Monday and very quiet, but a 19th century estancia--a large Argentnian ranch--was open for visiting.  Wealthy landowners from the 18th and 19th century built rambling estancias from which they governed their vast properites.  Today, many of these elegant old ranches have been converted to upscale boutique hotel or, in this case, mueums.  This one honored the life of the Argentinian writer Ricardo Guiraldes.  We spent a wonderfully quiet afternoon enjoying a long walk alone a quiet river's edge, sharing a meal in a small restaurant, only returning to the maelstrom of Buenos Aires late in the afternoon.

Our best day trip was to Colonia del Sacramento, in Uruguay, across the Rio Plate, about two hours from Buenos Aires.  The river is massively wide, and it's really not possible to see one side from the other.  A day trip to Colonia is popular and boats are full of people out for the day.  We toured the town, its old forst and visited a couple of museums and the lovingly restored church in the center of town.  Today, Colonia is a UNESO World Heritage site, but 350 years ago it was a Portugese settlement establisehed to make smuggling easier between Brazil and Argentinia.  It's a beautiful small city, lying on the wide, caramel-brown shores of the Rio Plata.  By early afternoon we'd had enough of touring and spent the rest of the day on one of the city's many beaches, only returning to the good air of Buenos Aires after dark.

The good air of Buenos Aires is loaded with street markets, especially on the weekend.  Two of the bst, but by no means the only two, are in the popular tourist centers of San Telmo and Recoletta.  Way too much money was spent at these markets, but let's just say that all of our Christmas shopping down for 2009! 

The good air of Buenos Aires has more than its fair share of theater, dance and music.  I was able to see a Spanish version of Hairspray, a musical about Eva Peron called "Eva," two tango shows and a whole lot of great jazz.  Plus, the streets, especially on the weekend, were were loaded with musicians playing for free and selling their CD's for about $5.00. It was also a lot of fun to watch really good tango dancers strut their stuff. 

It was always snice to come home to an apartment.  Last fall, I'd arranged to rent a place via a web page I'd learned about.  For $33.00 a night, we had a large, one bedroom apartment, albeit sparsely furnised, in a nice building in the upscale neighborhood of Palermo Viejo.  Best of all, it had a balcoy which did not get the morning sun.  It was a great place to spend the early part of the day and, after the sun dipped behind a neighboring high rise, to spend the late afternoon and evening.

By early March there was a definite feel of autumn in the air.  Days were noticeably shorter.  Kids had returned to school, and stores began advertising for Autumn/Winter 2009.  After Steve left, I lingered on two more weeks.  But solo in the city just wasn't the same.  Earlier, I'd connected with a small group of expats who live in Buenos Aires during the northern winter months, and I was grateful for the times I spent with them, enjoying evenings of music and late night dinners.

On the Saturday afternoon of my last full day in the city, the good air of Buenos Aires pushed in clouds and heavy rain.  It had been a lovely day, but by early evening the rain was steady and the winds so strong that they blew over a cabinet in the laundry room.  At midnight, my iPod went a little crazy; whenit settled down it was 11:00 pm.

By Sunday morning, the clouds and rain were gone.  Daylight was an hour earlier and the day was clear and absolutely autumnal.  My thermometer read 59 degrees--the coldest it had been since I left Plattsburgh two months earlier.  The front had blown out summer, blown Argentinians back and hour and blew in fall.

It blew me out as well.  Sunday I revisted a few favorite places, packed and cleaned the apartment.  Monday morning, march 16th, I caugght a fast boat across the River Plata and arrived in Montevideo a few hours later.

But the city has left its mark.  There were more tango steps to learn, more jazz to hear, and more milangas (tango clubs) to haunt.  As for its museums, I'd only seen a week's worth.  The good air of Buenos Aires stilll had more to offer, and even though i was leaving, I had a feeling the city had not seen the last of me.