Yesterday Lorena and Tess invited me to join them to visit La Boca. It was a holiday. Everything was closed for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Wow, I can't imagine that in the US.
Anyway, after trying unsuccessfully to drop off my laundry (the lavanderia was closed) and go to the gym (the gym was closed) and watching Beverly Hills 90210 reruns, I was happy to do something different, in spite of the fact that it felt like it was 120 degrees outside.
I met the girls in the subte and we headed off to La Boca.
La Boca is the part of Buenos Aires that you often see on the covers of guide books. There are brightly painted "houses" of many different colors. La Boca was where the Italian immigrants (and others) came in and settled. The houses are painted because it was a tradition in Genoa, or wherever these people came from, to paint their boats bright colors (I saw that in Buzios too). They used the leftover paint to paint their houses which were made of corrugated tin.
Now the rows of brightly painted houses are shops and restaurants and the place has a Disneylandish kind of feel, sort of like Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. I doubt Argentines go to La Boca. It is geared towards tourists.
It was fun, however, in spite of the scorching, humid weather.
From there, we took a cab to Puerto Madero. It was getting dark, and rumor has it that La Boca is not a place you want to be in after dark. The taxi drove through a section of La Boca that I had never seen before. I understood why it had its reputation. It reminded me of parts of "inner city" Philadelphia (actually north Philly) where blocks and blocks of houses are crumbling and big open lots stand where homes once did. The urban blight in north Philly is there because of the white flight of the 60's as blacks moved up from the south to find work. It is a testament to the destructive power of racism and neglect. I don't know what happened in La Boca though. For a part of the city that is so critical to the identity of Buenos Aires, I don't understand how it could be so run down and seemingly forgotten. I'm going to have to ask Leo, my Spanish tutor, to tell me about it.
Beyond the crumbling buildings of the old part of Buenos Aires where tango was born, and where Maradonna was raised, we passed under the freeway where it seemed we had entered Mexico or Honduras. Small shacks and shanties lined the road that would soon take us to one of the richest and most expensive parts of Buenos Aires - Puerto Madero.
We turned a corner from the squalor and within minutes we were walking along the canal in Puerto Madero, lined with expensive restaurants and posh apartment buildings, with new high rise construction visible everywhere.
It was amazingly hot and there was hardly any breeze at all. It was stifling. People were laying on the benches that lined the canal in the shade trying to escape the heat. I imagined they were people who lived without air conditioning and were trying the best they could to get through this very hot and humid day (I think from here it will only get worse).
Our plan was just to walk the canal and head to the subte to come home and shower and meet again later for dinner. But I remembered that there was this hotel in Puerto Madero called the Faena Hotel and Universe that Lorena wanted to check out and I suggested we go look at the hotel. We had looked at photos online and it looked incredible.
The hotel is located in an old brick building that is supposed to be an "English style silo". I think the guide book might have a different idea of a silo than we do. The building itself fits right in with the rest of Puerto Madero - there are old brick buildings lining the canal and some brick apartment buildings.
I was a little intimidated walking past all of the porters and folks standing outside of the door as I was wearing shorts, sneakers, a sleeveless shirt and was really hot and sweaty from spending the day in grimy La Boca. I once tried to enter the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok in sandals and they wouldn't let me. I totally expeced us to be turned away, but luckily, some heavily perfumed guests were just leaving the hotel as we got to the narrow doorway and they asked about a taxi, distracting the man in the white cape standing outside of the door and the other men in dark suits who were with him. We slipped inside the small garden and approached the big red glass doors. I could see a shadow on the other side reach for the handle and the doors opened for us.
There was a doorman and someone at a little lecturn as we entered. The guy at the lecturn asked if he could help us. I told him we just wanted to look around, again expecting us to be turned away. He gestured us in. I asked if there was a bar and he motioned down the long hallway towards the right where there was the "library bar".
I felt like Dorothy and gang as they walked down the long hallway to see the Wizard.
We looked around a bit and finally entered the library bar where we each got a very expensive drink. I got a French mojito which was a mojito made with sparkling wine, Tess got something with mango, and Lorena got a drink that had vodka, jasmine juice, lychee and lime. The drinks were really expensive. I mean astronomical.
The library bar looked out onto the pool, which was really beautiful. It was nice hanging out and pretending we could afford to be there. Did I say the drinks were really expensive? There was a horrible DJ mixing music that sounded more like car crashes than mixing. It got so bad with the loud thumping as he'd mix one song with another, and the volume going up and down, we thought we should have gotten our drinks for free.
I had to check out the bathroom and I was not disappointed. The men's room was made with white marble walls, big red doors on the stalls, a huge mirror with a silver and crystal frame, and spigots that looked like swans. I snapped a few photos (all of which will end up on my photo blog).
Finally, after hanging out in the library bar and the pool a bit, we left. As Lorena tried to take a photo of the hallway, a guy came up and told her she could not take photos. She was allowed to take photos of people, but not of the architecture. I thought this was a really dumb rule, so I am posting the photo I took when we first entered that they did not see me take. I don't believe that taking pictures should be restricted unless it violates someones privacy. So there.
We headed towards Plaza de Mayo to catch the subte and come home and shower for dinner when I suggested as we crossed Avenida de Mayo that we go to Cafe Tortoni.
Cafe Tortoni is a Buenos Aires institution. It is an old bar where different tangueros like Carlos Gardel and intellectuals like Borges hung out back in the day. It has tiffany lamps (that I imagine used to be on the tables) and stained glass ceilings. There are tango shows and it is filled with tourists clicking pictures as classic, old style waiters in black jackets and bowties rush around amongst the pandemonium. It is definitely worth a visit.
It was now after 9 and our plans to go home and shower and meet again for dinner were seeming to be a bit unrealistic. We finally decided to eat there. I got a steak and a "tomato salad" which consisted of two halfs of a tomato (I guess it was one tomato cut in half). Tess got a hamburger with ham, pineapple and maraschino cherries that mysteriously lacked bread, and Lorena got a salad with pineapple, turkey, hearts of palm, apples, and I don't remember what else. I also got a beer, Lorena got a Bloody Mary, Tess got a Pepsi and we had two bottles of water. We finished with me getting a piece of lemon merengue pie, and Tess and Lorena both getting a cup of coffee and sharing a piece of Black Forest cake. Our bill for this spread at this very touristy, highly visited, possibly overpriced Buenos Aires institution was two pesos less than what we paid for three very expensive cocktails at the Faena Hotel and Universe! Did I say those drinks were expensive?
When I went to the webpage of the Faena Hotel and Universe so that I could link this entry to it, I ended up checking out the spa. While the drinks in the library bar were ridiculously overpriced, the spa prices, which I am assuming are listed in pesos because it does not say US Dollars, look quite reasonable. So, I booked a day at the spa for myself on Friday. I'm scheduled for a 1 hour pranic healing and a 1 hour deep tissue massage. Amazingly, two hours at the spa are costing me only about a hundred dollars US. I could never get anything close to that in San Francisco.
Buenos Aires is a patchwork of contrasts - extravagent wealth, incredible bargains, grinding poverty and the daily stresses and pleasures - electrical outages, street closings, protests, lack of change and small bills, amazing wines, rich cultural heritage, intellectual curiosity and a well-educated populace, passion, crime, anguish and indulgence. As much as it might at times resemble Paris, or New York or Mexico City, it is unique and in reality there is nothing to compare it to but itself. That is one of the things I fell in love with last year and that is one of the things I continue to love about this very complicated city.
Update: the more I think about it, and from some clues I found on the Faena Hotel and Universe spa website, I think the prices are actually listed in dollars. For some of the treatments which are listed as $175, for example, they say below that it is $175 US and $548 pesos Argentinos (or something like that). While not all of the treatments are listed this way, I am assuming that those treatments that are listed as $175 are indeed all in dollars, and not some in dollars and some in pesos.
This means my two hours at the spa this Friday are going to be a super indulgence. After a week in Buzios, I'm finding it a little hard to allow myself to go ahead with this, but I am really curious about the pranic healing and really feel like I need and deserved to be pampered. My body is tired and stiff and I have really been saving so that I could afford this sabbatical. So, I am going to go ahead with my treatments and trust that it will be worth it (and hopefully not too addictive).
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