Buenos Aries: First Impressions? These people sleep in really late.

It started off so quietly early this afternoon walking the streets of Buenos Aires. But once they woke up, I found them to be just a little bit, well...crazy. I come back to that, but I should let you know how I got there.

My flight landed in BA (Buenos Aires) a little early and uneventfully at 7:20a. I've learned to take my time in a new city/country...make sure you get your ATM money, your maps, a snack, cleaned up...b/c you never know what you're going to get hit with once you step out of the "safe" confines of an airport in a foreign land. Thankfully, today wasn't one of those days. Last big multi-week trip, I immediately took off the wrong direction on the first train I hopped on. Today was a bus ride into town and it went alot smoother.

So I got checked into my hostel, which is one in the San Telmo district (neighborhood is gritty, artsy, a little rough around the edges). It is approaching Sunday lunchtime now and this city is DEAD. I left the hostel and wandered the streets just to get an idea of the vibe. BA is the self-proclaimed "Paris of the South". I dunno why places like to compare themselves to the grand cities of Europe, but BA certainly wasn't hopping like any Paris I knew. Well, I forgot that Argentinians are on "Spain" time. That means their day doesn't even start until it's time for it to get dark. Peak dinnertime is at around MIDNIGHT. No wonder this morning felt like I was in the early scenes of "I am Legend."

So I had lunch at a curbside parrilla, which is basically just a giant fire spit grill loaded up with all kinds of meaty goodies. It was time to test out my Spanish, which is bad...very, very bad. I ordered a choripan, a thick, split, smoked sausage between two buns for about $1.75 (talk about a deal). Cool..he understood me. I had also dug through my iPod Touch's Spanish to English dictionary and learned that takeaway was "para llevar". So I said that too. He looks at me puzzled and then says a couple of sentences of something back to me and I just have to give him this blank stare...lol. A waiter stopped by and poked me on the shoulder and suggest to just say "takeaway". Sometimes the English just works better.

So now it's getting into the afternoon and I head to this neighbor antiques fair that my guidebooks suggest for Sundays. Trust me...this wasn't as boring as it sounds. The street is turned pedestrian only and there are like 10,000 people lining it for 15 blocks. There are vendors, street performers and animals everywhere. People are selling antiques from some of Argentina's wealthier periods, trinkets, some cool stuff too. But then there were the street performers, some of the stuff was just downright corny. The weirdest was the 60 y/o man that was leading a group of older ladies in a streetside symphony. The 60 y/o man was a large man and he was dressed just like the older ladies...Sunday dress and all (x-large of course). Just corny stuff. But my favorite was the cute little doggy couple tied up at a residence. I'll have to post a picture once I have a second to load up some pics. You'll have a laugh. They fit right in.



I headed to the river shoreline next and discovered that all of BA has descended on the walkways there as well. They have this outdoor park with this band that is performing "something". It's some tune that goes on and on for ten minutes and they has a unicyclist on stage with them doing jumps and random weird things like playing his unicycle like a guitar after one of his crashes. Worst of all, the crowd of 50-60 somethings is really into this and they are all dancing around on the grounds in some sort of merry-go-round like dance. I was facinated. I'm wondering if this is just the Argentine people on the weekends and they are all business and serious come Monday morning. Tomorrow...we will see. I'll start doing a little touring tomorrow. Hopefully, this time BA wakes up before noon.