Two Places to Stay in Buenos Aires

Arriving in Buenos Aires, Plot and Duck got lucky until Plotnik flinched. When they decided to fly down instead of taking the long bus ride, it meant they needed to find a place to stay for one night before their six day reservation at Casa Giorgio started on Thursday,

The chain of events was easy -- John Fernandes, whose picture you saw the other day from Iguazu, had used to own another small b and b, called Garden Buenos Aires, in the San Telmo district of B.A. He had sold it to an artist friend of his, so he called her and she said she had two rooms available: the cheaper one with a shared bathroom and the more expensive two floor garden cottage with its own facilities.

The flight from Iguazu to B.A. was fast and easy, no turbulence, sorry about that Cousin 2-3. Plot and Duck hired a remise (cab) to take them from the airport to San Telmo, but they had already learned their lesson in Santiago about keeping the taxi with its meter running until they've completely checked out where they're going to stay. This time Plot and Duck and the taxi driver waited at the door of Garden Buenos Aires until they finally heard approaching footsteps.

While they waited they couldn't help but notice the piles of garbage heaped up all over the streets, in and out of bags, and the sidewalks that looked like they had dug them up 100 years ago searching for gold and never got around to paving them over again. The owner of Garden Buenos Aires, Pam Murphy, a New York expat, finally threw open the big wooden doors. "It's a big house," she said.

Plot, Duck and the taxi driver gasped in disbelief. Plotnik has seen a lot of houses in his time but nothing - NO T H I N G like this one.




Imagine an old New Orleans railroad flat, only not a railroad flat which is small but a railroad mansion which is huge, with many, many rooms, one after another down long hallways that open into gardens and sitting spaces, and inside galleries open to the sky and plants and trees growing in every corner, and crazy artwork on the walls of naked girls and African masks and every room had some kind of loft and balcony and there were iron stairways going up the sides of every wall disappearing into Pam Murphy and her daughters' living space upstairs which, as Plot and Duck found out later, is everything the downstairs is times three.

The cab driver went away. Pam Murphy showed Plot and Duck the expensive garden cottage first and they took it right away, since it was only for one night and not ALL that expensive. (Did he mention luxurious? Let him mention it now, and let him say he felt guilty taking the expensive room, being a man of the people, but not for as long as you might have thought, also being a spoiled brat.)

Pam bought the lot behind her a few years ago and turned it into a garden, which means the property goes all the way from one block to another. That's where the little pool is and where you have your cocktails before your nap before dinner, or maybe it's the other way around.



What a palace. No more strip of ham substance for breakfast. We're talking granola -- GRANOLA! -- and thick homemade coffee cakes and fresh squeezed orange juice and fabulous coffee. All that stuff Plot and Duck had been thinking about, until they got to iguazu and found it there, and now again in Buenos Aires.



But the neighborhood: funk-eee! San Telmo is like a cross between Brooklyn and Spanish Harlem and Soho, only Buenos Aires is so much bigger than New York and the streets are very wide with zillions and zillions of people on them, and there aren't any high rises in San Telmo. LOTS of graffiti, most of it political, lots of notices about tango, and an unreal amount of trash with no trash cans.

No beggars, though, and no visible homeless people, which has to lead you to the conversation of which is worse: garbage in Buenos Aires, which can be picked up, or homeless people pissing on the sidewalk in Saint Plotniko, which apparently cannot be.

Plot felt at home here. He loved San Telmo. So he decided to call the woman at Casa Giorgio and cancel his reservation.

He really needed the Great PD to do this for him. Plotnik doesn't do well when Argentine women scream at him in Spanish. This is the second time it happened and the results were the same. He stammers. he errr-ahhhs. And he always agrees with whatever it is they're screaming about, in this case that he had a solid reservation and he damned well better show up the next day with his sick wife (the excuse he had tried to use -- he got the Duck's approval first) unless she is dead or in the hospital and it better be a big hospital.

So this morning (after breakfast) Plot and Duck reluctantly checked out of Pam Murphy's place in San Telmo and came here, to Casa Giorgio in the neighborhood of Caballito, where the room is actually nicer than the other one at one third the price. Dance-Nik and The Great WantzaNewname would love the way they shop for shoes up here.



So it's back to a hostel situation, but a nice one. True, there's no free phone to call the USA. No bottle of wine on the downstairs coffee table. No insane house of spirits with fascinating other guests. Here it's kids again who speak Spanish like Mummy Plotnik.

No granola, but fresh baked chocolate churros.

The Duck has already unpacked. And the tango lesson was last night. Tango is a hell of a lot harder than it looks. Looks like we're staying.