Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is beautiful and I'm very grateful that most of the streets and large avenues are one-way only which makes crossing them less of a life-threatening affair at crosswalks. It also keeps traffic moving in a very steady flow. 

It's been a week since we arrived in Argentina and it already feels like we've been here for much longer. I suppose part of that is because we have fallen into a routine, albeit a very short lived one as it is going to change the week after next when our Spanish classes end and we take off to Uruguay. Buenos Aires has become surprisingly cool in the evenings over the week and as much as it is a welcome sensation to not fall asleep in a puddle of your own sweat but to a cool breeze I must say that I much prefer a hot summer night on a patio than a windy one. I guess you can't have it all and I shouldn't complain. People in Canada are bundling up to go outside as I write this and I'm having a pity parade because I have to wear a cardigan to protect myself from a breeze as I walk the streets in flip-flops at night.

Our neighbourhood is called Almagro and it is an urban working class barrio (neighborhood). Walking around the first night we discovered one of the best bars in the city around the corner, El Banderin. Our second night we came across a milonga down the street and then there was that time we discovered the tango school on the other corner. So all said, we live in a very convenient neighbourhood that feels a little different from the higher class streets of Palermo and Recoleta. Yes, there is an abandoned building right next to ours and then there is the matter of the garbage and dog poo right outside the abandoned building but that is a small price to pay for being generally immersed in a Porteño (this is what Buenos Airens are called) neighbourhood.