Buenos Aires

We arrived in Buenos Aires frst thing in the morning and after scrabbling around for some change for the bus (there are hardly any coins in Argentina, and they´re running out of notes!), we took the bus through town to our hostel. It was actually a fairly run down hotel, but it was in San Telmo, the home of tango, and surrounded by cobbled streets and leafy squares that reminded us a bit of France.



We went to a really nice old ´Allo Allo´-style cafe, complete with bow-tied and moustached waiter, and had some breakfast before getting into our room. We spent a lot of the afternoon asleep as it was so hot, but went out later and sat in the Plaza Dorrego and watched people tangoing over a beer and a steak (for clarification, we were the ones with the beer and steak).

The next day being Sunday, we were lucky enough to be around for the San Telmo antiques market, which is famously big, and attended by street artists and tango dancers.











Still not done with the tangoing, we went into the centre of the city to find a show. We ended up at the 36 Billiares, which is an old billiards bar with a bar area and stage that looked about 100 years old. We thought we were there to watch the dancing, but ended up watching what appeared to be the Argentine equivalent of Tom Jones, or maybe Tony Bennett. He kept jumping down and coming into the audience, so we sat stock- still in our seats so as not to attract his attention.



About an hour after Tom Jones departed, the tango show began, which was really excellent and involved a little crowd participation. I thought the piano player looked a little like Jean-Claude Van Damme, but Rich wasn´t convinced. Will definitely be signing up for lessons when we get back!











Spent quite a lot of time the next day arranging onward travel, which turned out to be quite annoying, especially in the heat, but we finished up with a drink in old Palermo. We had managed to avoid the hard core-nightlife (that starts about 2am) and had so much more to see. Would seriously love to go back if anyone is interested?!