Buenos Aires

Because we’d never been to the southern hemisphere we decided to travel to Argentina and Chile. We’ve been in Buenos Aires since Thursday, long enough to have a sense of where we are in the city, to travel the buses and subways, make dumb mistakes, and receive lots of friendly assistance.

The streets here throng with people, and the many, many cafes seem always full of people talking over a cup of espresso or cappuccino. There is a very rushed, chaotic feeling to the streets which are crammed with taxis, busses, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians.

The big boulevards have special bus lanes, and bus service is great except at rush hour, when lines are ridiculously long, and the crush is exhausting. The pedestrians jaywalk like New Yorkers, watching traffic, not lights, and the drivers only yield right-of-way when they have to. As for the motorcyclists, they really seem to be continually risking their life. But people seem genuinely cheerful, if always hurrying.

A friend who lives in Northern Argentina told me he had turned down a prestigious job in Buenos Aires because life is too pressured in the city–too hard a place to raise a family. As a vacation destination, though, it’s fun.

Pizza is the hamburger of Buenos Aires, it seems like there is a pizza place every other block, and it’s a crispy, very thick crust version.  We went to the “Best Pizza in the World,” at Pizza Guerrin, in business since 1932. Lively and delicious.

A chain we’ve seen all over is called Kentucky Pizza. But  of course we haven’t tried  it.

We’ve had one fabulous meal that I found through a site that offers private dinners–sort of pop up restaurants all over the world.  This one was a very intimate, organic, farm to table restaurant that we went to by taxi.   Continue reading “Buenos Aires”