Buenos Aires Again

It has been a week. I am in Buenos Aires and I realized that have not written a word about it. I have been so un-inspired, it is not even funny.

Let's see what happened since then:

April 4th, 12 pm: Corina's massagist Susana gave me an hour and a half long massage, an ayurvedic one:unfuckingbeleievable. She cured me from tip to toe, literally. I recommend it to all of you, it not only relaxes your muscles, it relaxes your (my) thought-infected mind as well.

10 pm: Dinner with friends at Rodney Bar. Rodney is a hole in the wall bar in a neighborhood called Chacaritas, famous for its huge cemetary as far as I know. I discovered this place back in march, the photographer Javier introduced us to this weird place one night. It is in front of the cemetary--you don't see the tumbs, there is a huge wall that seperates us from the dead people. It was a fun dinner.

I worked on discovering Buenos Aires pretty much the whole day on wednesday and that night, Orhan Abi, Pablo (a friend we met in Pedrera, who owns a cool bar in Las Canitas) and I went to a speak easy in Palermo. Speak easy s are big in Baires, as was this one, nominated as the "Best Bar" by their version of New York Magazine that week. We took a cab and got out in front of a house, number 878 on Thames street. It is a colonial house from the outside, we rang the bell and someone opened it, and voila! An incredibly cool bar! We sat at the bar, and ordered drinks, I asked for the Black Saketini (made with sake, black vodka, cucumber juice and tabasco sauce), it was somehing. Then we ordered food, but I was not impressed with anything. It was the best bar afterwards, not the best restaurant. It reminded me of Casa Antonio, though it lacked the coolness and the delicious food of their cozy restaurant. The backdrop of the 878, which made all three of us very curious was: where were the cool people who should have crowded this place? I quote Pablo on why there were so many ugly people at the bar that night: "I think they come to hide here!" he said, we almost fell off our chairs and left 878 soon after that comment.

Thursday we rested.

Friday was the last part of my birthday celebrations, a party was organized by Pablo, Anita and Orhan for both me and Orhan. Needless to say we had an amazing time, many people came, some old friends and many new ones were made. We partied until 6 am, I slept on Orhan's couch, so saturday started late for both of us.

We made brunch with bacon and fried eggs, later in the afternoon and went to see Spike Lee's latest movie, the Inside Man. It was really good. We thought of eating turkish food at the Armenian restauran Sarkis later that night, but there was a huge line outside, we left that for another night, went to our homes and slept.

I met with Gunes, my other turkish friend who lives here on Sunday, and had a wonderful Sunday walk in the Ecoreserva park in front of Puerto Madero, the Battery Park of Buenos Aires. We walked under the warm sun for hours, then walk to San Telmo, and luckily found a place to eat there--the best pizza I had so far-- among all the tourist who crowded this cozy neighborhood as they do every Sunday.

I have been working on discovering the city again since Monday, in a more local way, starting from going to a gym, then taking the city buses (the public transportation system is ample but confusing if you don't have a Guia T and know how to read it), a lot of walking. Titi's arrival made Tuesday a blast, as we walked for 8 hours, window shopping in Palermo SoHo!