Walking in Buenos Aires

This week has been especially interesting simply because of the ungodly amount of walking I´ve done. I dunno what inspired it, but whenever Matias and I hang out, we don´t really have a purpose in mind, and we end up walking and walking and walking all over the city, just wandering around like lost puppies. It´s been fun because I´ve gotten a new found appreciation for the city now that I´ve seen it at a slower pace. Before, it was always taxi rides of subway trips that would spit me out in a new part of town, but now I´ve seen the city change from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Things that I took particular notice of:
- There is an ungodly amount of really really big buildings that used to be mansions like the ones in Pride and Prejudice, except now they´re all closed down or converted into hotels. I wanna live in one of those houses!
- There´s a part of town called ´Palermo Viejo` where all the rich people live that´s super quiet and very quaint. The cars there are fancy but old, like Mercedes from the 80s or preserved classics. They were really cool to look at.
- Ice cream here really varies from heladeria to heladeria... it´s a science to find the best ones in town
- The Argentine people are obsessed with Plazas. You can´t walk more than 10 blocks in any direction before happening upon one or two or ten.
- There´s a slaughter house right in the middle of the city where all the cows from the coutry come to be killed.
- Tango dancing here is WAY more serious than in Mendoza. Matias and I went to a little outdoor Plazita and I didn´t dare dance. God, the people here are good. Matias pointed out, however, that the only other place in the world where people dance as well as they do here is in New York.... who knew, right?
- If you really want to see what desperate poverty is, walk through the microcenter of BsAs in the middle of the night. At 2am, all the hungry people of the city come out onto the streets and strew garbage everywhere in search of a meal. I saw families of 20 people - half of them kids lost to the system - sitting in the middle of the road, blocking traffic, while they chowed down on someone else´s discarded leftovers. I felt terribly guilty for walking by them in clean clothes and gold jewelry, but Matias kept assuring me that it was their choice to be there. I don´t know enough about the economic situation of Argentina or the governmental policies for the disenfranchised to actually have my own solid opinion on the matter, but it was a sight I probably won´t forget for a long time.