Buenos Aires!

I've now been in the capital for two days. It's a HUGE city. Well, bigger than Montreal in any case, at something like 5 million people ( 15 million if you take in the whole greater Buenos Aires area). But its hugeness is less about numbers and more about it feeling really big. I spent the day wandering down the heart of downtown; the avenues are, like, 10 lanes wide, the buildings are tall, and every street in the centre is just packed with people. And you have everything from the old grandma selling homemade empanadas for $.30 from her hole-in-the-wall storefront, like in Salta and Córdoba, to the Adidas superstore and the Zara outlet, with prices that match those in Canada, which you definitely didn't see in the other places I've visited.

Though I know that throughout my two months here I will constantly be discovering parts of the city, yesterday I dove headfirst into one of the most iconic parts of the city, San Telmo. It's a neighbourhood of crumbling ornate buildings and narrow cobblestone streets. On weekends a bunch of the streets are blocked off to car traffic and so the whole area is filled with street performers and people selling crafts and antiques and pop corn and just about anything you can imagine.

Jessica, (the Chilean friend with whom I'm staying for a couple of days), and I took the micro across town to San Telmo from her apartment in Palermo. We had a late lunch on the terrasse of a cavernous old restaurant ( I ordered mashed pumpkin, to celebrate Thanksgiving) and then just wandered around for the rest of the afternoon. Wanderings punctuated by street-side tango shows of varying quality, ice cream cones, and playing "wow, that would make a great souvenir if only I wasn't carrying all my worldly possesions across the continent in an already bulging backpack."

My Spanish classes start Thursday. Now I just have to find a place to live...