Buenos Aires: Friday

On Friday, I was at the conference again for the majority of the day. Colin (my student) had his presentation, plus there were lots of other things I wanted to see. Tim started his day by re-visiting some of the places we had seen the day before to see how they looked in the sunshine. This included the big metal flower (Floralis Genérica) and the cemetery (La Recoleta). He took some more photos.

After this, he walked over to the Plaza del Congreso, which is where (you'll not be surprised), the building that houses Argentina's congress is. He took some photos of this impressive building, then texted me to suggest him a lunch spot. I suggested Las Cañas based on online reviews, which turned out to be a mostly Italian place (there are so many immigrants in Argentina that there are a ton of such places). He had house made pasta, which he says would have been really really good if he hadn't lived in Italy.

After lunch, he walked back to Puerto Madero with an intent of walking in the ecological preserve, but it was inexplicably closed so he just wandered around and headed back to the hotel.

After the conference, we went to dinner with Colin at an adorable restaurant not far from our hotel called La Floreria (it's a restaurant attached to a flower shop). The food was very good.

After dinner, Tim and I went back to the hotel to rest up a bit before heading out on a private "Tango Tour". We had a personal tour guide named Joe. He is a British expat who has lived in Buenos Aires for 6 or 7 years. Once we met up with him at the hotel (at 10pm), we hopped in a taxi, and he took us to a milonga. We learned that the natives to Buenos Aires don't really see the tango shows that are created mostly for tourists but instead get their tango fix at these local dance parties. They're not in dedicated tango clubs. The first one we went to was a cultural center in San Telmo. The building itself is an old complex of churches and historic buildings (apparently you can go in and tour the building spaces during the day), but at night, groups can rent the space and host tango parties. So there was a live band and then just tons of people spilling from room dancing. It was really fun. It was clearly where the people from the neighborhood went to tango. We stayed at this place for a little over an hour, then we hopped into another taxi and went to a second community center for a second milonga. I can't even tell you for sure what neighborhood this one was in. This was a more formal event, with an official dance floor in the middle and tables ringing around it. Here, Joe explained (and demonstrated!) how dance partners pair up. First, a man and a woman make eye contact. The man does a very subtle sideways gesture with his head. The woman can either then nod or look away. If she nods, both stand up and meet on the dance floor. It was incredible. The other thing that was very cool was the diversity in the club (especially age diversity). People in their 60s and 70s dancing with people in their 20s (that they'd clearly never met before). The whole social observation was just really fun. We watched Joe invite a lady to dance (she was a pretty young Iranian!) before we grabbed a taxi back to our hotel (about 1:30am).