Sojourneyers – One family's adventure

Sometimes the amor hits you at first sight.  Other times, it is a longer courtship.  After five weeks in Wellington, a city one can traverse on foot in half an hour in any direction and where we could be atop Mt. Victoria in 20 minutes on foot from our apartment, Buenos Aires was overwhelming at first.  It is sprawling, flat and noisy.  To be honest, I felt a bit claustrophobic for the first fews days as we tried to get our bearings.  But, with the benefit of two full weeks here, we’ve been able to adopt a more relaxed pace and that has allowed us to discover a Buenos Aires that we love.  We’ve spent hours in cafes soaking up the street life and wandering the streets of Palermo and Recoleto.  We rarely have escaped our apartment before noon, having adjusted easily to the 10 pm dinners.  (School is going to be a harsh re-entry for Zara next year.)  We work, we read, we drink cortados and eat medialunas. It all feels so civilized.

La Feria de San Pedro Telmo.  This is held every Sunday on the Plaza Dorrego in the oldest BA neighborhood of San Telmo and was jam-packed on a hot afternoon.  Compared to our neighborhood, it was teeming with tourists, but we had a wonderful time exploring the handicrafts and antiques.  Zara picked up a new instrument (the ocarina) and Jonathan lucked upon a pair of handmade leather shoes for half-price.  There are street performers, tango dancers and multiple cafes where people tuck into bowls of peanuts and drink refreshing lagers.

Tango.  No, we didn’t Tango, although there are a ton of opportunities for those more nimble-footed.  We did see a fabulously entertaining show at La Ventana, which was a highlight of our two weeks here.  The impressive footwork from the passionate tango dances elicited multiple “oohs” from Zara, and once again made me fear for our future when she said “I want to do that with [unnamed classmate]!”‘  The show was not limited to the tango, but showcased an entertaining variety of traditional Argentinian song and dance, with the most impressive performer performing an incredibly skilled and rapid-fire routine with bolas (traditional hunting weapons consisting of a wooden or leather balls at the end of braided ropes) that had the audience captivated by the near misses with his cranium.

Ornithophobia sufferers, beware.  Buenos Aires is pigeon paradise.  For our animal-loving daughter, this has meant nearly daily visits to a neighborhood park in Palermo to feed the pigeons.  On most days, an elderly, toothless gentleman sits on a park bench selling corn kernels at 5 pesos a bag.  He calls her Zarita and tells me that his sister is from Calfornia. When he’s absent, Jonathan takes Zara to a nearby mercado where she buys a bag twice as big.  These larger ones she can make that one bag last for half an hour.  Fortunately, Jonathan is on pigeon duties most days. He was more tolerable of Zara’s hobby until one pooped on his head one day.  (Post-script: A parrot at the same park pooped on me today.)

Getting ready for a late night at tango

Tango Show

Sunday in the Park

Shopping in Kid City

Flipping patatas fritas

Mausoleums

More mausoleums

Recoleta Cemetary

Late night dining

Post-opera

Street perfomers in San Telmo

Ferio San Telmo

Booklovers delight at El Ateneo

Carousel in Palermo Viejo

Even the Palermo trees are well-dressed!

Pigeons!

Our Palermo apartment

So, what better way to introduce a 6-year old music lover to opera then to book standing “seats” with a view of only 1/3 of the stage at an opera with Spanish subtitles sang in French?  Yep, that was our brilliant plan in going to see “Carmen” at the Teatro Colon.  The theater is billed as one of the five best acoustical venues in the world and it is gorgeous to boot after benefitting from a massive refurbishment effort a few years back.

As we climbed staircase after staircase after staircase to the highest level, I started to have a few misgivings. Opera arguably is most happily enjoyed from the comfort of a seat that allows for an occasional snooze.  Fortunately, there was a hard bench behind our standing area if standing became too taxing, but when seated, the stage wasn’t visible at all.  Zara did her best to appreciate the show, but we hadn’t done a great job of summarizing the story for her in our hurried read-through of a Carmen synopsis on the way over in the cab and with most of the stage obscured from view, she didn’t have much to go on.

We lasted 90 minutes, through the first two acts, which was long enough to enjoy the well-known Habanera and Toreador songs.  Jonathan and I then made an executive decision to leave, so as to not forever spoil opera for her.   (The fact that the tickets cost less than to attend a movie in the US made this a much easier choice.)  The upside is that next time Zara should be thrilled just to have a seat from which she can see the stage.  I suspect that the tango show we have tickets for later this week will be a bit more up my dancing girl’s alley.