week ending

Hey there,
So my Mom came to town to pay a visit! I awoke on Thursday morning at 6:30 to pick her up at Ezizia Airpot at 8:10AM. Ouch. The night before it occurred to me that this was going to be something of a challenge for me as I hadn't been up that early in almost four months. In setting the alarm clock the device appeared to be something almost alien to me and sleeping through the alarm quickly became a source of anxiety. Her arrival came off without a hitch though. I hired a remise which is kind of a black car service to take me and they promptly phoned at 7:30 to let me know they were out front. A round trip fare with tolls, tip and waiting time came to the genteel sum of 30 dollars. Not bad at all. Anyway she's been a real trooper in dealing with this loft of sliding hidden doors, fire pole, pool ladders and propane gas heaters.

Yesterday was a beautiful Spring like day that hovered around 65 degrees for the duration of the daylight hours. It was warm enough that stopping in to a heladeria for some ice cream seemed like the right thing to do. We stumbled upon a place in the neighborhood called Dolce Amaretto Helados Artisanales. If someone chooses to juxtapose the words ice cream and artist you can bet that I will take notice. The portenos down here take their ice cream very seriously. The menu board was littered with flavors with names like Cielo(sky?), Marscapone, Alfajoretto and Tramontana. Realizing what he was dealing with linguistically, the owner resorted to the universal language of sample spoons. After we each had settled on a couple of flavors in a cup and content to exit the store the owner proceeded to go nuts, giving us a sampling of 20 of the 32 flavors he had to offer. As the cup I had already purchased proceeded to melt almost untouched. I indulged him in sampling flavor after flavor much to his delight. He was an ice cream artist and I was a connoisseur and this symbiosis would probably explain why it was nearly 45 minutes later before we finally retreated from his shop.

Last night was spent in Palermo Hollywood which we figured to be the Williamsburg Brooklyn of Buenos Aries. The weather lent itself to a table outside the Mekena Club, a live music venue. When we walked up it sounded as if Elvis Costello was playing. Tune after tune of My Aim is True era Elvis emanated from the club, all sung in English. The band was called Blues Motel, Blues Motel 6 is more like it. It was appalling. Two highlights of the club were A)There were hipster parents who had brought their kids and B) beautiful mullets sans irony. I have no idea why or how kids accompanied by parents are permitted in clubs at 2:00AM but it was interesting to witness. Back to the Mullets, they were fantastic - real rocker soccer mullets with bangs. At least 20 people we saw exiting after the band finished looked like they could have been the keyboard player for Supertramp. We snuck a bunch of pics and I will post them shortly.

Today was one of those uneventful days one sometimes has while traveling where nothing really happens yet you are seemingly on the go for its; entirety. We woke up late and went for breakfast, after breakfast it was nearly 2:00, a bit of shopping on the way home from the cafe and a subsequent discussion of laundry issues made sure that it was almost 3:30 before we got into a cab to do anything productive. We headed to Puerto Madiero in order to purchase tickets at the Buquebus office which has subsequently been dubbed the boogie bus by my Mom. The boogie bus is the ferry that traverses the Rio Plate in order to get one to Montevide, Uruquay. This was unsuccessful as we didn't have our passports with us which are required to secure a ticket. By the time we had incompleted this task it was getting dark and we were again hungry. We decided that a nice Italian dinner was what was needed. The problem is that one can not actually get dinner here at 6:00. The dinner menus are not in effect until 8:00 at night. This is b/c nobody eats dinner here until 10:00PM. We ended up making our way over to a place called Olsen which is a distinctively Scandinavian looking place that serves home made vodkas which are served at 18 degrees below zero(the menu made much note of this fact) and whose decor resembled a car mechanic's garage turned Unitarian Church - lots of Norwegian Wood(isn't it good?) We made do with a simple lomo sandwich before heading home.

On a random note. Automobile emissions do not seem to be an issue that anyone down here is familiar with. Yesterday when crossing Avenida de Mayo I watched a bus belch the biggest blackest plume of exhaust. The belch seemed to last for almost a minute. After a while of turning my head and covering my mouth I decided it was possibly safe to cross the street. In mid crossing however I walked into a carbon curtain that suspended itself for the lenght of the time it took to cross the intersection. This is a serious issue and regulary manifests itself on shirt collars at the end of a day out.

So it's off tomorrow to Uruguay at 9:00AM on the boogie bus. I will let you know how it goes.

Suerte
C.