Good reasons to visit Buenos Aires |
Wednesday, 28 December 2011 |
Before I get to today's topic, let me
say what just happened a few minutes ago. As I was coming back from
my walk/exercising in the nearby park I was asked by an Argentine how
to get to the law faculty of the university. That is not all,
because I was actually able to tell him where it is and how to get
there (!!!!!!) WOW!!!! I can almost feel like a porteño (a
resident of Buenos Aires).
Good reasons to visit Buenos Aires?
THE WEATHER. I don't know how it
is for the rest of the year but if you live in Europe or North
America then December/January is the perfect period to come here.
The latitude of Buenos Aires is about 34 degrees South. That is
similar like Sidney, Australia, and Cape Town, South Africa. The
respective cities in the Northern hemisphere are Los Angeles (34
degrees to the North), Athens (almost 36 degrees North) and Osaka,
Japan (34 North). The daily temperature most of the time is close
to 30 degrees apart for a few cloudy days when it was a little
colder.
THE PEOPLE. I find Argentines
very polite and friendly. In fact the are so polite that one might
get an impression that they want to be friends with you. Whenever I
asked for a way or anything else, I was always treated with utmost
respect and friendliness. In fact a good percentage of them speak
some English and they are happy to use it once they notice that your
Spanish is in the need of a lot of improvement.
PIZZA TO DIE FOR. I don't usually
buy pizza at home, but one day I was passing an establishment with a
lot of people inside. I went in to discover that this was a pizza
place where you can either order a pizza to take it out or eat at a
table inside (it has a big restaurant-like room with tables).
Intrigued by the popularity I ordered one big pizza Napolitana con
Roquefort. Sine I don't usually eat pizza, I had no idea what I
am ordering, except that the name Napolitana sounded good to me, and
I new that I like Roquefort cheese. I brought it home, made a salad
and started my dinner. I COULD NOT BELIEVE HOW GOOD IT WAS! It was
just melting in my mouth. OK, the place is called El Cuartito, La
Buena Pizza, and the address is Calle Talcahuano 937. If you are
here, you must have it! It is about 3 blocks away from Teatro
Colon, or the Palace of Justice (Palacio de Justicia).
WINE. They have a great selection
of wines and the prices are about 50% lower then in Canada.
CHEESE. I am buying great
Roquefort and other cheeses at a place nearby, and like wine, at
about half the price of what I would pay in Vancouver.
ARCHITECTURE. I hope to post some
pictures soon. I took a lot of them. At the beginning of 20th
century Argentina belonged to the richest countries of the world. The Argentines had great ambitions to transform Buenos Aires
architecturally to rival Europe. However, some are of the opinion
that Buenos Aires was at that time more like Dubai is today -- the
city had the wealth to pay for the massive rebuilding but it lacked
the know-how and had to import talent, labour, and materials from
Europe... Nonetheless, what was build then remains until now and it
is pleasing to the eye (at least to my eye)
PARKS. There are many parks in
the city. Some of them contain countless statues and sculptures.
In fact all kinds of various monuments, and statues are posted all
over the city. I plan to devote one of the future posts to show
some of them.
- DO NOT COME HERE TO STUDY SPANISH. Without going too much into detail, the pronunciation here is strange, and they use "Vos" instead of "Tu" (singular "you") which conjugates the verbs differently -- a form that is hardly anywhere else used outside of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile.
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