Buenos Aires 7

Today we thought we would go up market and we figured out how to use the metro and took ourselves over to the barrio of Palermo, which is one of the more upmarket inner city areas.

But first we detoured to see a bookshop called Ateno which was converted from an old Opera House.  It is now the biggest bookshop in Argentina, wonderful! but all in Spanish of course.  We are so lucky over here that our books are relatively cheap.  Over here they are double the price.  We saw one of  Jamie Oliver's cookbooks for about $60 (£40) and an ordinary paperback would be £15 upwards.

We could have stayed there all day just browsing all those books in such a wonderful setting, and I presume a lot of people do.  Instead we had a coffee on the stage and watched the world go by.

Right!  Dogs..... The Argentinians love dogs and everyone has one or more.  In the poorer areas strays or people with rather large ones and in the richer areas, little fluffy ones.  They are everywhere, and one of BA's problems is dog shit everywhere, a bit like Paris.  They obviously don't have the laws we do, and you have to be careful where you are stepping.

But they do have dog walkers and you see them everywhere.

We saw this guy later on in the park.  He had staked the dogs individually, and then let one go, played with him for five minutes, and then the next and then the next.  Full days work.  But you could tell he was top dog, and he cleared up after them.  I hope he got paid well.
 

Palermo turned out to be the Chelsea of BA and we wandered around the streets for a couple of hours, full of small restaurants, designer shops and squares.  Would be a nice place to stay if we ever came back.

And then we walked back through Mayfair, or so it seemed.  Small apartment blocks and clear side walks. Someone has a lot of money over here.

Funny name for a restaurant

Anyway a great day.

BA rain.  Everywhere you walk in BA you get drops of water on your head.  We kept thinking it was raining and then realised that it was coming from all the air conditioning units on the shops and apartments.  You constantly have to dodge the water

So tango.  Saw quite a log of dancing wandering around the streets, usually in restaurants.  Lovely

But we decided that we were going to see some proper tango and booked ourselves on a tango show and dinner in an old turn of the century cafe called Cafe Angelika.  It showed an intimate setting with small tables in front of the stage.  Of course if was a rip off, not individual tables but long rows of tables of about 30 settings shoved together right up to the stage.  Waiter threw the food down at you as they passed.  The food was passable.  Unfortunately we were right in front of the stage which meant you had to look up 8 ft to the stage and spent the whole show with views of their knickers.  Really disappointed it was a completely lie.

But the dancing was good, but next time, I would go out to the outlaying barrios and visit a Milonga instead.