"Paris of the Southern Hemisphere"

For those of you who don't know, Buenos Aires is often referred to as the Paris of the southern hemisphere. From what I have explored (which is actually a lot considering I've been here about 2 days) Buenos Aires does not possess the glamour of Paris. So why the comparison? Somewhere between my taxi cab from the airport and this morning I realized: it's the "love in the air." It's not the same romanticized type of love for which Paris is renowned; it's a bit more aggressive and outwardly sexual, but this "love" is EVERYWHERE.

The first people I saw in Buenos Aires were a school boy and girl, probably about 14. She was standing on a step to what appeared to be her apartment building and he stood a step below her, having walked her home when he shot up on his tip toes and kissed her. And I thought to myself "how cute." Of course, today I saw a woman basically chewing a man's tongue off and I thought to myself "how disgusting," but the love is there I suppose.

El Centro does remind me a bit of Paris, with its crazy drivers on its no lane streets flanked by one modern architectural landmark (the Obelisk) and one historic landmark (Casa Rosada). But the shic-ness of Paris does not permeate here so far.

Of course I can't resist comparing everything here to New York. I do think this city is a lot like New York. On the other hand, if there were as many American flags around NY as there are Argentinian flags around here...I think the country would spontaneously combust from all that patriotic passion.

The subways are very similar, although here you can open up the windows (thank G-d because otherwise you'd suffocate). The clubs are so similar - with the exception that MOST Argentines can kill it on the dance floor. Which brings me to last night....

After hanging out in my hostel - and falling asleep til about 1:30 am - I headed out to meet the girls from the night before at a club. Bahrein. To me it sounds a bit exotic. Very New York if you ask me - but I liked that about it. It had the decor of Plan B (that awful Brooklyn club I had to review for Inside New York whose only redeeming quality was the decor) but a much better execution. Crystal chandaliers, leather couches and a good size dance floor with a DJ who clearly believed that there is no such thing as too much Gaga.

He played so much Gaga that although I tend to agree that there was no such thing as too much, I was close to converting my opinion. He played every song of hers in a row at least twice during the night. But hey, Ra-ra-ra-a-a never gets old to me....Pokerface might.

The night before, at Pagana, I thought I was going to die of second hand smoke. I could literally feel the smoke squeezing the fresh air from my lungs. In this way, NY clubs are so much better for not allowing smoking indoors. Isn't that a fire hazard anyway? At Bahrein I could breathe, but I could barely see those seizure lights were going crazy - I think they do it to keep you awake.

Anywho, we met some nice Argentine boys and I had a really great time speaking with them. The girls are great but they like to speak in English, so when I meet people I get all excited to practice the language I came here for. After talking for a while I asked if they wanted to dance. Two of them started dancing with my friends and the third one told me that I picked the one guy in Argentina who can't dance. So, I'll amend my earlier statement that said all Argentine men can dance to MOST Argentine men can dance.

We had a great time and I didn't get back til nearly 7 am, which made it difficult to wake up this morning. That being said, this is how you know how much I love Rafael Nadal. I woke up just a few hours after climbing into bed to watch him DOMINATE in his 2nd Wimbledon championship match. VAMOS RAFA, you did us proud!

I had lunch outside at a nice little restaurant by the Palermo Zoo called Lateral. Then I finally took off for my destination of the day: La Feria San Telmo. I bumped into Rachel and her friend in the subway so I took a detour with them to a "mansion" in San Telmo that they wanted to see.
This is where I learned that you don't necessarily change your plan for people. Sure, it was good to have company, but what good is company if you are looking around the most boring building ever. I'm also not a great tour taker unless it's something that fascinates me - so I should have known. But afterwards we wandered the fair.

OMG. SO MUCH FUN!!! I'm spending the entire day there next Sunday. The street is so long I don't even know if I'll make it through the whole fair in the Sundays that I have left here. So much leather, so much jewelry, knickknacks and antique televisions and phones, art galleries. But we had the most phone when we came across a troupe of drummers. They were AMAZING. One of the drummers - who held the main bass type drum - kept lifting the drum over his head and playing it in the air. A crowd formed a huge circle around them and everyone was dancing together in the streets. WOOOHOOOO!

Tonight I think I'm going to stay local in Palermo and visit a jazz club, Thelonius Club - named for Thelonius Monk (thank you Jazz at Columbia). And tomorrow I move to my apartment for the week which is just a couple of blocks from my hostel.

That's all for now!

Besos y abrazos!