Post by Ella. Worth a mention. There is an extensive network of busses and subway here. Easily accessible with a Sube card. We haven’t purchased one yet because they are notoriously hard to find and Uber is ridiculously cheap and convenient. Okay call us lazy. Uber is illegal here. But everyone uses them anyway. Even…
Month: April 2024
The Green Fist
Post by Grubb Next door to the Contemporary Art Museum in Buenos Aires is the Museum of Modern Art. Another pleasant space all low ceilinged and linear. The main exhibit featured lively colored paintings with an environmental theme from the early 1970s. To think it’s been more than 50 years since we’ve been rattling this…
Con Art
Post by Grubb. In most of the places we visit we try to check out a contemporary art exhibit. See what the young artists are doing in that area. Sometimes we’re in for a pleasant surprise, like the leaking water droplets playing on a factory floor of drums in Tromso, Norway. Yesterday we got out…
Double L
Post by Ella. In Spanish, the LL is pronounced as a ‘ya’. So Villa is pronounced Vee-ya. In Argentine Spanish, the pronunciation is Vee-cha. The LL is a ‘ch’ (as in church) sound. I’ve been called Aya, Acha, and she. Just my luck to have a double LL name.
Crash of the alien spaceship
Post by Grubb. A couple days ago we were idling through a park east of where we’re staying and after we crossed a colorful bridge spanning the Avenue del Libertador and passed the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, we came across what appeared appeared to be the gigantic wreckage of an intergalactic spacecraft. Upon further…
Different kind of theater
Post by Grubb. There are classic world-unto-themselves bookstores that we’ve visited in Lisbon, Copenhagen, and Manchester, Vermont, but nothing matches El Ateneo in Buenos Aires for Baroque extravagance. Ella’s already posted a photo, but let me give you a shot from the second floor mezzanine. Notice how it’s arranged like an opera house with box…
Futbol: “Hello, neighbor!”
Post by Grubb. That’s what I hear from the guy wearing a baseball cap standing next to me on the street corner of a busy Buenos Aires thoroughfare while Ella and I wait for the bus carting us to the soccer match Monday night. Brooke, one of the women about to attend the game with…
From museum art to street art
Post by Ella. The Museo Nacional Bellas de Artes in Recoleta (10 minute walk from our AirBnB) claims to have the most extensive collection of fine art in South America so how could we not? A nice collection of Goya’s and Rodin’s, scattered French painters, an Italian or two. My favorites, though, were the Argentine artists…
Street tangos
Post by Grubb When we joined the throng wandering the streets of San Telmo on Easter, it was hard not to catch a glimpse of tango dancing couples entwining themselves with their studied movements. In the doorways of cafés, on the tree shaded flagstones in the corner of a park, the pavement of a driveway,…
Before there was graffiti
Post by Grubb. There were cannon balls studding the tower of the San Pedro cathedral from an Argentine assault against an English regiment holed up inside.
Activist graffiti
Post by Grubb. We’ve been expecting to run into numerous political demonstrations since Javier Milei, a Milton Friedman free market zealot elected in December, personifies the enemy in a heavily unionized country. So far we’ve only come across a small gathering of placard carriers blocking a street today, but when we were touring the San…
Colorful Conventillos
Post by Grubb. Immigrants getting off the boat in La Boca more than a century ago jammed themselves into the cheapest digs they could find. They were offered small rooms that in some cases were former convent cells. They painted their places with whatever paint was on sale, so there was no uniform color scheme…
The queen of markets
Post by Ella. We spent the day on Easter Sunday moseying around San Telmo, one of the oldest barrios in the province of Buenos Aires. Known for its antiques market in Plaza Dorrego, Sunday street fair, young tango dancers jostling for space to perform (and pass the hat afterwards), the place was crammed for blocks…
The furia of Argentina
Post by Ella. Some of you know, April 1st is Grubb’s birthday and our anniversary. So we decided to go all out on the celebration yesterday. Van loads of police in full body armor, the crush of fans in team colors, the heavy continual pounding of drums. All part of the experience we voluntarily signed…
Recoleta
Post by Ella. Argentina consists of 4 regions (Andes, North, Pampas, Patagonia) which contain 23 provinces. The province of Buenos Aires contains the federal district, City of Buenos Aires (CABA) which is quite small in area. In addition to the federal district, there are 48 barrios within the province. Population of the province of Buenos…