Brazilians and La Boca

UPDATE TIME:
Yesterday (Monday), we woke up early to get on the orientation and bus tour, which took us through Buenos Aires, we basically got to see all the spots we had walked the day before. It was nice to hear all the stories behind the buildings and neighborhoods and not have sore feet. I have to admit, I took a few naps. Ingrid (our tour guide), had a monotonous voice that dragged on. Near the end of the tour we finally made it to a neighborhood we hadn't seen yet. La Boca.

La Boca is awesome, it used to be one of the poorest neighborhood made up mostly of Southern Italian immigrants It was such an isolated neighborhood, that its citizens appealed to Italian Government in the turn of the 19th Century to make it part of Italy. The neighborhood, which is centered around the main street Caminito, is marked by street tango dancers, brightly painted buildings and street markets. The whole study abroad group, went to Teatro Caminito for lunch and a tango show, which was awesome. They served us empanadas as an appetizer. Then for the main course they brought out this HUGE slab of steak for each person and salad and fries for the table. It was delicious. Some people didn't like the steak, but it was exceptional for me. The tango show was awesome, as you can see:





After then Tango Show and some postre (dessert), we were free to explore the neighborhood. Our first stop was El Museo de Cera (Wax Museum), which was a pretty humorous but funny look at Argentine history through the medium of wax statues. Haha, $10 pesos well spent. I'd say.

Then I found the love of my life in a tango dancer, and for $20 pesos we danced and got a few pictures that I will post soon. We walked around and then decided to take a bus (el colectivo) back to the hotel area. We got on the bus and met some very nice Brazilian tourists, who were in town for New Years. It's amazing having a conversation in 3 languages. They spoke English really well and Spanish not so well, but we felt like speaking spanish, between the three languages we communicated that A. We were having a great time in Buenos Aires. B. We like Seinfeld and C. We wish we were in the city longer. We got off with them in the neighborhood of San Telmo, my favorite so far. It's a lot like Boca, with its charm and European flair, but it's not as tourist-y. The group of us (by the way which is James, Alex, Michelle, Maria, Christian and Emma) saw the beautiful Basilica of Ave Maria, which was much more attractive than the Cátedral Metropolitana which is the Plaza de Mayo, which we saw on the tour. We dallied through San Telmo til we got the Subte (thats the subway = subterraneo) and took the B Line to the neighborhood of Once, which is supposed to be the Jewish Area of Buenos Aires. It did resemble the Diamond District a lot, but not overwhelmingly Jewish. Although, it was quite a site to see Hasidic Jews running a Pizzeria, while speaking Spanish. Who would have thunk?

After some cat naps in the hotel, we headed out to Palermo, the "night life neighborhood" even though it was a Monday. At first we couldn't find anything terribly exciting, thinking to ourselves, wow New York would be more active on a Monday. We got a quick bite at a Brazilian restaurant in honor of our new friends. Still pumping with energy we kept exploring, and after a friendly Argentine bartender suggested we do like David Bowie and "dance in the street," we began to think we'd find no discotecas. But we were wrong travelling up to Honduras Calle, we found the main crossroads for Palermo SoHo (they call it SoHo on maps and everything) at Plaza Serrano and it was hopping (mind you this is about at 1 am by now). We checked out a few spots and were about to go into a club, when we met our second set of Brazilian friends for the day. As it turns out, they were leaving the club for dancing in the street as we were about to enter. So we joined them and danced in the street with our new amigos from Sao Paolo. The two couples were on a cruise, and spoke even less English than our first friends. Maybe it was el vino tinto or their our outgoing ways but we continued to have a great convo with them, dancing and exchanging ideas in a trilingual conversation, for 40 minutes. We learned how to make dirty gestures in Brazil, that James looks like Eminem to Brazilians, and that what we call grinding, they call franking or is that freaking or was his name Frank? Nevertheless, we exchanged emails and now want to go to Sao Paolo. What a night. By then it was 3:30 and we were ready to call it a night. We took a cab back and I realized that Buenos Aires is a city for cab drivers. Not only do they have yellow lights to warn you of red lights coming but the lights also go through a yellow before their green, so drivers can jump read lights mad easily. Wow, I was amazed at how fast we got home with our driver, down Avenida Santa Fe.