Cafe Tortoni, Comedy & La Manzana de las Luces

Yesterday after class a group of decided to go to Cafe Tortoni.  Apparently this place opened up in 1858 and has been open ever since.  The inside still looks like it could have been in 1858 and the waiters greet you in tuxes.

In reality you are paying for the history and ambiance.  The coffee wasn't spectacular and the churros were average.  The waiter was really nice and spoke some English and tried to interact with us pretty well.  If nothing else, I can say that I did it.

After the trip to Cafe Tortoni I made arrangements to eat dinner and head to a comedy show with a local and a friend.  We first met up at his apartment and I was amazed by the size of his balcony.  It was a private balcony almost as big as the whole apartment.

View from the balcony

When we arrived at the comedy show I was able to try Fernet, which is very popular here in Buenos Aires.  I believe they were giving away free samples because they are marketing a new mint flavored Fernet.  I thought it was actually pretty delicious... but I had also had about a bottle of wine before we went to the comedy show.

Fernet display with bottle.

In reality I only understood about 5% of the comedy show.  It caused me to reevaluate what I define as a "fluent" speaker of another language.  I think part of being fluent is understanding cultural context and cues along with vocabulary and syntax.  At least I was able to understand some of the body language and I'm a little sad that I didn't understand more because based on audience reaction... these guys were hilarious!

Several times throughout the show they came out in this car and performed skits.  Here's what I figured out from what I saw in the show:

Top Left:  This guy is the obvious gay one.

Top Right:  This guy really likes to make sexual movements with his hips.

Bottom Left:  This guy is passionate about whatever it is he was saying that made everyone laugh.

Driver:  This guy was wearing suspenders and could make me laugh with his facial expressions.

Today after lunch and booking my tour to Mendoza I went to La Manzana de las Luces.  I really just wanted to see the secret passageways that are underneath the building.  It is 12 pesos to enter and I tour guide gave some good information.  She spoke really quickly, but I caught a couple stories about murder and deceit.

The tunnels weren't as awesome as I was hoping, but it was a good little piece of Argentine history and for the equivalent of $2.75 USD - it was worth the 40 minutes tour.

Headed down to the tunnels...

Tomorrow I head to Uruguay for a couple of days...

Ciao,

Tim

Buenos Aires: The Paris of South America

After our Spanish classes were done today there was a coordinated walking tour through certain parts of the city with the same title as this post.  This tour explained some of the architectural influences throughout the city that were inspired by various European countries.

I am not particularly good with this type of information, but the buildings were beautiful and the information was relatively interesting.  I can't recite it all verbatim so pictures of some of my favorite buildings will have to suffice.

This building was magnificently large... and it was a single family residence.  I can't imagine one family needing this much space.

If I understood the Spanish of the tour guide correctly, this building was built in the 1930's.  It is still large by today's standards and I can only imagine how people felt looking up at it 80 years ago.

This building now is the Ministry for International Commerce.  

This is one of the interior gardens of the Ministry for International Commerce.

The two buildings above obviously have very different influences on their individual style.  They are positioned as they are pictured with the one of the left on one side of the intersection and the one of the right on the other.  It was an interesting juxtaposition.

I was a big fan of the entrance to this building.  This was at one time the U.S. Embassy.  Now it houses the Latino American Art Museum.  

Perhaps my favorite sight of the whole day though was impromptu.  As I was walking home and the sun was going down I was right by the Obelisk that sits in the middle of 9 de Julio (a large street with many, many lanes of traffic) and noticed that the sky, moon and obelisk looked amazing.

In this picture I really like the way that the sky looks and the angle of the obelisk.

I then realized from this angle you can see the moon on the top left of the obelisk and had to snap another photo.

Sometimes beauty is found when you are least expecting it...

Ciao,

Tim