neighborhood hopping in buenos aires

Hola Gente [Hello People!]-
I'm sitting in Antonela's room after another day of neighborhood hopping here in Buenos Aires. I arrived at 4:30am Wednesday morning after a 30 hour stay in Miami (beach included) and went directly to Anto's apartment to sleep a few more hours. My dear friend John Stewart had arrived a few days before me and was ready for me. After months of planning, scheduling, rearranging, etc, I was happy to hear that my two friends had made several plans for me already... on Wednesday John and I set out to visit my old neighborhood, San Telmo. When I was living there two years ago, it was a funky, artistic, up and coming area known for its excellent antique markets and shops. It was also still a little bit sketchy, especially at night...

Walking around the area memories came flooding back to me. Every street corner reminded me of a different conversation, night out, meeting with friends, or casual Sunday afternoon. But it was clear that the neighborhood has gentrified quite a bit in the last year or so. High end clothing shops filled with the unique creations of local designers occupy spaces that were formerly dusty old antique stores or odds-and-ends mom and pop shops. Despite the obvious changes, John and I managed to find a favorite pizza parlour and a few new clothing items as well...

Every day I have numerous ''oh yah'' moments, as I have deemed them. Like, ''oh yah, the toilet flusher is 5 feet above the toilet on the wall here'' or ''oh yah, you have to ask for the check at the restaurant or they won't bring it'' or, a personal favorite ''oh yah, everybody is SO outgoing!'' It is funny to see these things with fresh eyes- things that became so normal over my year in South America that I didn't even think twice about them. The functional dysfunctionality of everyday activities... it is both comforting and nostalgic to be here again, especially with John since he was my saving grace and fellow city explorer through my 5 months here.

I'll leave you with a funny little story from our walk to Palermo, another infamous Buenos Aires neighborhood, yesterday afternoon. As John and I strolled down Honduras Street, a piece of art displayed in a window on the street caught my eye. It was a painting on a combination of driftwood and canvas, with a foggy hill and single tree standing in the middle, and a line of text across the center reading ''anything can be perceived as landscape'' in spanish. The painting was displayed on stack of large chemical barrels. As we stood there looking at it, two men walked by and one of them said ''it's nice isn't?'' as he walked past. 5 feet later they stopped at the door to the building and he turned and said ''would you like to see more?'' John and I looked at eachother, shrugged and followed him inside. Turns out he is an architect/artist/designer/musician and the painting was displayed in what was the window of his office! We chatted with him (or rather, listened to him chat) for about 20 minutes and saw more of his pieces and some of his architecture models. He gave us his email and told us to write him and he would send us photos of his new paintings... upon leaving both of us looked at eachother and just shook our heads saying ''oh Buenos Aires...''