After clubbing on Thursday and tango on Friday, Saturday brought another serious Argentine passion: football. Many would argue that Argentina can lay claim to the two greatest footballers to play the game, Maradona and Messi. Brazilians would no doubt argue the case for Pele but regardless Argentina has a proud, footballing heritage and alongside it a deep rooted, fanatical passion for the game (90% of Argentines claim allegiance to an Argentine football club). As a Leicester City fan I can not claim to have had the likes of Maradona and Messi grace my club (more Lineker and Heskey – two greats in their own right of course) but I do have a shared passion for the sport and so an opportunity to see a game while in Buenos Aires was too good to miss.
Tag Archives: Buenos Aires
A month in Buenos Aires with a baby (and one weekend without)
We spent the month of October in Buenos Aires. Up until then we had been on the move for almost two months, and while the travelling was amazing, we were starting to feel like we might all benefit from settling in one place for a little longer than a week.
Our plan for the month was to hunker down, save some money, try to improve our respective Spanish levels (more on this in an upcoming post) and find some enjoyable child-centric things to do together. All of this, we managed to achieve (except the save the money part – did someone say budget?) with – to our immense delight – a few additional gems squeezed in as well.
Buenos Aires is pretty dreamy. Beautiful to look at, fun to be in, it is grand, individual and full of life. We spent the first few days strolling about, admiring the architecture, mincing around in parks and generally just enjoying the relative stability of knowing we didn’t have to pack up all our belongings again any time soon.
The Rosedal – one of the many beautiful parks of Palermo
What I Write About When I Write About Running
“All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
I love running. I love the “homemade void” as Murakami (one of my favourite authors) describes it – for me that’s the place where worry disappears, thinking itself disappears and you just put one leg in front of the other and enjoy a peacefulness that I find very difficult to recreate in any other environment. I don’t believe I have ever felt worse after a run than I did before it, even after the grueling 20+ milers when training for a marathon (a marathon that injury ultimately prevented me from participating in).
A Bird’s-Eye View of Buenos Aires
It was the early hours of Sunday morning and the mockingbird soared high above the Rio de La Plata. From that vantage point it looked like the continent itself was trying to swallow the ocean. Mouth wide open, the upper lip the coast of Uruguay, the lower lip Argentina’s eastern flank. As the mouth of the river narrowed, the bird, like many of the people below, felt the magnetic pull of the city that appeared down to its left. Looking from up high the lights of Buenos Aires stretched out along the coast and far inland, like a patchwork of tiny bonfires. The grids of light were occasionally interrupted by darkness where the city’s green spaces breathed air into the congested centre. Vast avenues that cut through the patchwork of roads were dotted with occasional traffic, mainly yellow and black taxis, straddling eight, nine, sometimes ten lanes.
Five things we’ve learnt since being in Buenos Aires
We are now 11 days into our month long stay in Buenos Aires and it’s safe to say we love it here. After changing destination every week since August 26th when we left Rio we were looking forward to the relative stability of an extended stay in a city with a global reputation. So far, despite the fact our explorations have been cut short by Amber’s first illness since being away, we are very happy to be here – the city has met all of our expectations and in many cases surpassed them.
The obligatory photo of the BA sign in front of Obelisco de Buenos Aires (built by Germans in 1936 in just 31 days)
Here’s what we’ve learnt so far.
