Don't cry for me, Recoleta...

We finally spent the day yesterday being proper tourists, and decided to see some of the major sights on offer here in big, bad BA... There are a collection of neighborhoods that make up Buenos Aires, and where we are staying in Recoleta, wasn't really even part of the city until the mid 1800's... The original part of old BA is further south from us, branching out from the giant obelisk that stands at the intersection of Avenida 9 de Julio (the world's widest boulevard)and Avenida 5 de Mayo... This area of town has some of the most fabulous architecture and has such a different flavor to Recoleta: a bit more run down, but certainly no less grand. We walked the length of 5 de Mayo, through the gorgeous plazas and little sidewalk markets filled with vendors selling handmade jewelry, leather belts, CDs, and bits of antique junk from their basements... We stopped and had coffee at a funky, musty cafe where the bow-tied waiter served us from glass soda bottles and bone china serviceware... Our sandwiches and soft drinks cost less than two pounds sterling. We past the famous Hotel Castelar http://www.castelarhotel.com.ar/ where the rich and famous of BA used to play 100 years ago... the website has some really cool old black and white photos from it's heyday... Finally, we arrived at the Casa Rosada, the former presidential palace and the scene of many infamous moments in Argentina's history... It's from this balcony that Eva and Juan Peron gave their speeches to the working-class masses that supported them throughout their reign... The square in front of Casa Rosada does have a feel of historical importance, that this is an important place in the hearts and minds of Argentines... The costumed armed guards standing at attention in the doorways certainly adds to the ambiance. When we left, we realized that we'd spent over 6 hours just walking around, soaking up the sights, having totally lost track of time... We took a taxi back to Recoleta, exhausted from the sun and ever-present air pollution... but we finally spent the day acting like proper tourists! I'm rather proud of us. xxx Jason

Iguazu Bound...

Ok, so we haven't actually been to Iguazu Falls yet, but I've spent the past 2 days trying to organize a trip to the falls, so now I'm getting very, very excited about going... I've learned all sorts of new vocabulary, like flow rate and Guarani, terms that are important to understanding the "big picture" of a visit to the falls (or so I'm told by the online experts on the subject). Neither of us realized that bookings must be made months in advance, so we've encountered our first scramble for availability so far on our trip around the world... thankfully, we've discovered a great travel agent (other than myself) who is helping us sort it all out... Miriam has been great, and above all, speaks near-perfect English to help explain the details. As it turns out, most of the flights and hotels are completely full during the length of the time that we'll be in Buenos Aires, somthing we didn't anticipate. This has simply confirmed my belief that I LOVE A CHALLENGE and has really driven my desire to go... I've found the flights myself through Lan airlines website, but getting the hotel we want has proven to be even more difficult... We have our sights on the 5-star Cataratas resort hotel http://www.hotelcataratas.com.ar/ in on the Argentinian side of the falls... After cruising the website and a glowing testimonial from Miriam, we are dead set on staying here... combined with the fact that the entire stay, including all meals, will set us back about 70 pounds sterling a night... (To put that amount into perspective, Paul and I spent 60 pounds a night to stay in a musty converted barn outside Kendall in the English lake district. Converted barn VS. 5-star tropical paradise? You do the math...) I'm heading down to Miriam's office in about 2 hours to see if she's made any progress... A good travel agent can do wonders with making available rooms suddenly appear! Otherwise, things here in BA are going great: Paul is keeping very busy with Spanish lessons, swimming at Megatron, checking out ballet schools (I think he found one yesterday at the Galleria Pacifica arts center that looks extremely promising)... Speaking of ballet schools, Paul has asked me a few times to join him on his quest for the right studio... The other day, we walked just north of us to a place that was recommended as possibly being suitable for classes on his level... The scene we walked into will be burned into my fragile mind forever... A blackened, unmarked door followed by narrow and dimly-lit staircase, leading to a reception area that resembled a tomb more than a dance school: dusty fake roses and yellowed ballet posters covered the walls; a dark velvet sofa sat in the corner, on which was deposited an obese woman in a pantsuit, blowing cigarette smoke into the windowless room... Behind the desk sat the Argentine-version of Baby Jane Hudson: a heavily-faded former ballerina with rouge circles on her cheeks, who was eager to discribe the high-level of instruction at her school... Paul was extremely polite and asked a few questions before we bolted for the door... Once back on the street, we burst into laughter! Very bizarre, but also hysterical, experience. I only wish I had her photo to post on the blog! Baby Jane Peron. The most popular song here at the moment is last-year's most popular song in England, James Blunt's Beautiful, a song that I never really liked in the first place, and now I am subjected to around 3 times a day... he's getting more airplay than the Beatles! I am really enjoying Nelly Furtado's LP Loose, which is about as close to hip hop as I see myself enjoying... http://www.nellyfurtado.com/ Tonight: water the plants and then head to 2 for 1 night at the Recoleta Village Cinema, which has become our weekly ritual... Tomorrow: Lourdes the chatty housekeeper is coming to clean and change the linens at around 1pm, followed by the electrician, who needs to replace some wiring that has caused the overhead track lighting to short circuit... then yoga class at 7:15pm, followed by dinner out? Saturday: We see the Opera Boris Godunov at the Teatro Colon... All you could ever want to know (and more) about this opera can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Godunov_%28opera%29 After the show, we are off to meet Franco and Juan to hear a singer at a little nightclub in Palermo... I am simultaneously experiencing both domestic and cultural bliss. Fantastic! More soon. xxx Jason

Argentina nights...

Howdy from big beautiful BA! This is the strangest internet cafe, but I have come to really like it: it's right across the street from our flat, and run by this eccentric family with two pitbull mix dogs, who lie around and growl at people when they walk in... Has no one told them that this might be slightly bad for business? I know it sounds really horrible, but you just have to see it, because the owners are so nice and relaxed, and now that I've been coming in here almost everyday, the dogs don't growl at me anymore... Although it was SUPER off-putting the first time I came in here, now I find it really funny in a sick way when the dogs growl at uninitiated customers... Twisted! Just yesterday, one of the dogs grabbed this girl's purse and started chewing on it... she tried to grab it back and ended up in a tug of war for her handbag with a growling dog! The old man behind the counter just sat there, chuckling... I'm finding myself settling in well to regular pattern here in BA, although we are having some issues trying to sleep... the location of our flat is fantastic in the sense that it is right in the heart of things, but this also comes with the constant noise of traffic speeding by at all hours... the buses here run 24 hours a day up and down Las Heras Blvd., and are extremely noisy and old... Paul keeps waking up from the noise, also the fact that we are both 6 feet tall and trying to squash into a double-sized bed... these two factors are making for difficult slumber sessions and beginning to effect our entirely positive impression of the flat... We've been weighing the options, and have decided against trying to move flats, but instead to possibly invest in a different mattress for the next 10 weeks, and buying some earplugs... Hopefully this will solve the sleeping issue. Otherwise, spending my days at the gym, grocery shopping, looking for deals on fresh flowers for the flat, cleaning up, making dinner for Paul... I have discovered that I actually love being domestic and spending my time puttering around the flat cooking and cleaning is quite enjoyable for me... The people here in BA continue to surprise and confuse. My limited Spanish isn't helping me to assimilate, but I still mangage to get by fairly well. The weather has been alternating between sunny and warm, perfect for spending time on the terrace, and pouring rain. The poor plants are getting over-watered from the bouts of torrential rain. Tomorrow night, we are going to try out a new yoga class, and then on Saturday, we have reservations at a little French restaurant called L'Ecole... we had a fantastic meal there the other night and are looking forward to going back... weather permitting, we'll eat outdoors on the patio... if there's no rain, it should be absolutely lovely! I am fighting the urge to buy heaps of beautiful clothes, shoes, leather jackets, belts, accessories... all dirt cheap and of the best possible craftsmanship... I just can't justify buying things right now, being on the move, and how in the world will I carry them with me? I just bought Johnna's ticket online to visit us in Thailand... getting very excited about seeing her and spending time together in Asia... She will love it, I'm absolutely sure... She'll arrive on 03 April and stay for 3 weeks... During this time, the plan is to travel around the central plains, visit some ruins, then possibly head south for some beach time... then flying to Siam Reap in Cambodia and doing about a week at Angkor... Still seems so far away, and yet advanced planning is a must! Glad that the ticket is purchased and the dates are set... xxx more soon. xxx Jason

Uriburu and Las Heras

The photos are all from our little flat at the corner of Uriburu and Las Heras Blvd. here in Recoleta, Buenos Aires... We are OVERJOYED with the city and thrilled with our first week in Buenos Aires. We are both loving it so far, this city has made a near perfect first impression on both of us, and we are just basking in the glow of urban life once again after departing from sleepy Santiago, Chile... We did really enjoy Chile, and had some fantastic times there, especially in Valparaiso, but in reality is it pretty boring and conservative in comparison with this place... BA is so alive, electric, and fabulous: the stores, the people, the architecture, the food and wine... we are still just soaking up the fact that we'll be here for almost 3 months... It really feels like Paris in many ways... I know this is a stretch, and Paris is one of those cities that everyone loves to compare with other places, but there is a distinct urbane flair, glamour and "chic" to this place that reminds us of Paris. The streets of Recoleta are lined with boutiques, bakeries, green grocers, tiny cafes and intimate restaurants... We've spent the week day-dreaming about moving here, buying a flat, and living the South American highlife... Prices are SO CHEAP and since we are largely spending British Pounds, it is like a "more than half price" sale... The peso is almost 6 to 1 to the pound... a real bargain for sure!

Our little apartment is ideally located, one block from Recoleta cemetery, on Las Heras Blvd, one of the major thoroughfares of the city... We less than a week, we've moved in, joined the gym, signed up for home delivery of all our groceries and water, found a little place to do our laundry... Just as an example of prices, we took 2 HUGE LOADS of laundry to this place, and to have it washed, dried, folded, and delivered to our door cost us 7 pesos total... Just over 2 US dollars! The kid that brought it to us was shocked when I tipped him 2 pesos... He looked like he'd never been tipped in his life!!!! We arrived just 6 days ago and I already am able to navigate myself really easily around the area: it helps that the city is planned on a grid network of one-way streets, which makes it much easier to locate addresses and get from point A to point B. I keep using the advective "little" to describe out flat, as it is tiny, but charming: maybe 700 square feet in total??? but split over two levels, with a beautiful terrace filled with plants... and the location simply can't be beat.

Our new gym is so funny: it's kinda fancy, but also kinda run down, in that unique way that Buenos Aires seems to do so well: simultaneously posh and rickety... We took another ABSOLUTELY AWFUL Pilates class this morning that had us both almost laughing, and then later, a bit pissed off... Not quite up to our standards!!! I don't think the woman was even trained to teach, and kept making us do the strangest, most awkward movements! We were laughing to eachother and almost got up and walked out, but we were right up front and didn't want to be rude, so we stayed and toughed it out. Yikes!

Tonight is Friday, so we are going out to party a bit, check out a few bars, and get our groove on... We did go out one night in Santiago, to the city's biggest gay disco, which was like stepping back in time!!! Way, way back in time... It was so tame and downright cringe-worthy: we both had to make an effort to muzzle our bitchy mouths and fight the urge to criticize everything around us... Which believe me, was hard to do! Lots of dated music, bottled beer, acrylic knit jumpers and tight jeans... I felt like I was in Wichita! I mean really, who wears a jumper to a DISCO??? I slammed about 6 cocktails and then forced myself to get out and dance... They were all gawking at us like we were from another planet!!!! Yeah, planet London... Thankfully, Buenos Aires is a bit more, shall we say, cosmopolitan.

A strange thing happened this morning: a city bus crashed into our building!!! When we came downstairs today, the entire corner of Uriburu and Las Heras was blocked off by police, and the rear end of a city bus was sticking out of the little bridal shop located on the ground floor of our apartment building... Unbelievable! Our flat is on the top floor, and faces the other side of the building, but still it is hard to believe that we didn't hear a thing! A light post was flattened to the ground, and there was glass and debris everywhere... Crazy. We returned within just a few hours, and it was largely cleaned up.

More soon! xxx Jason

Welcome to Buenos Aires!

SO, here we are in Buenos Aires... It has been a wonderful, crazy, intense, tiring, lovely past month of non-stop travel and we are both so relieved and relaxed to be settling in to one place... We checked into our fantastic little apartment here at the corner of Uriburu and Las Heras just two days ago, and sitting here now, it seems like over a week... Brazil was such a fantastic, sun-soaked experience and Chile was strange, communist-feeling, and somewhat annoying, but moving around so quickly and covering so much in a relatively short period of time will naturally take it's toll on the spirit and the body, for sure... We both have been so looking forward to dropping our backpacks and "spreading out" a bit in our new flat, which has certainly NOT disappointed in the least...

We showed up on Monday at 12pm for our check-in and no one was there to meet us... after about 10 minutes of waiting around in front of the building, a short little blonde in high heels comes running manically towards us shouting "Oh My God, I'm SOOO late!!!" in this unmistakeable east-coast American accent, juggling a huge stack of papers and notebooks... This was our first impression of Vicky, our new landlady, who was kissy and huggy with us straight away... Born in Maryland, but raised in Buenos Aires, she's renting us her two-story "maisonette" and living in a smaller flat on a lower floor of the same building, both of which she owns... The apartment is crammed with beautiful oil paintings (Vicky's a painter), neglected but not yet dead houseplants, and the most gorgeous hardwood floors and bannisters... (You can check out photos of the apartment at www.4rentargentina.com and search for "Uriburu and Las Heras" in the "Recoleta" neighborhood...) We have a beautiful and huge outdoor terrace overlooking the city, and the location of this place simply cannot be beat: dead center in the most fashionable district of the city... we are walking distance to absolutely everything: countless shops, boutiques, cinemas, sights, and the final resting place of Evita, which is a block away in the Recoleta cemetary... The past two days have been somewhat of a daze, getting to know the city, stocking up on groceries, unpacking, settling in, getting a "feel" for the area... Buenos Aires in going to be an amazing experience and this city has so much to offer... we are both barely able to contain our excitement about being here!

We spent the day today running little errands and hanging out at our new gym, called Megatlon (pronounced Meg-At-Lone, which we have dubbed "Mega-tron.") This place is the un-rivaled high-tech playground of BA's fashion and grooming set, catering to gorgeous gay urban professionals and overweight upper class business men trying to delay another heart bypass... The swimming pool is amazing, but the Pilates instruction is pretty luke-warm... Paul and I attended our first Pilates mat class today that was, ummmm, let's say "creative," but was actually bordering on dangerous... Afterwards, Paul approached the teacher, who is a nice-enough guy, and asked him a few questions about his training and technique... Without being prompted, he asked Paul if the two of us are Pilates teachers, after watching us work in the class... hehehe! I think that we both have REALLY high standards for the classical Pilates work and it's made mediochre technique very easy to spot... If my Spanish were better... watch out BA!

Tonight, I think we are going to go out a check out a bit of the nightlife... the one problem being that they don't get started until after I am usually in bed!!! I've had a couple coffees, so I think I'm up for it... but after the age of 35, I often find myself standing in the latest, white-hot nightspot of the moment stifiling a YAWN! Let's hope I can pull it together and stay up long enough to see why this city has knocked Rio out of top-spot for South America's gay nightlife capital... We plan on starting at a club called "Titanic" which has a 1920's cruise-ship theme and is only about 4 blocks from our place... but they don't even open until 1am, and won't get bumping until around 3 or so!!! Wish us luck...

More soon! xxx Jason PS: Still having issues uploading photos... will keep trying!