Buenos Aires - San Telmo Antiques Market

We left Mendoza on Sunday morning and had an easy flight to Buenos Aires (BA). Most remarkable to me from my window seat in the plane was the extent of irrigated agricultural fields between Mendoza and BA. We did go through large areas of undeveloped scrubland, but it was like flying across the Midwestern US (only all the fields are rectangular instead of those odd round ones you sometimes see in the western US).

Once in BA we took a cab to our new apartment where we were met by the rental agent. It’s a studio apartment located between Barrio Norte and the Microcentro. It’s convenient to the Subte (subway) line and not far from the ritzy neighborhood of Recoleta. BA is a city of 3 million people, 12 million including the outskirts. So it is divided into many neighborhoods. The apartment looks out into the middle of the block, so it is quiet and has a small sunny balcony. The balcony’s view over roofs and the middle of the block made us wonder how the middle of city blocks are taken up! In ours there appears to be an old brick building that is now completely surrounded by taller apartment buildings. We are on Santa Fe street, known for its shopping. I have been attempting to find some new shirts to wear, but so far everything is either too trendy or doesn’t fit well. Oddly, many stores carry knit shirts that are all one size fits all. Fortunately most seem made for women approximately my size.

On Sunday most of the stores are closed but we found a restaurant on the corner by our house for lunch. They had very good pasta and thin crust pizza. Fortified by lunch, we took a cab down to San Telmo for its famous Sunday antiques market! For those of my friends who collect antiques, you would have thought you’d died and gone to heaven. Hundreds of booths filled Dorrego Plaza with all antiques imaginable (actually, not much furniture, but there are plenty of antiques stores around the plaza that have furniture). There were booths with old brass fittings, vintage clothes, books, silverware, ceramics, gaucho paraphernalia, copper pans, coins, knives, comic books, old glass soda siphons (several booths of these for some reason). . . There was so much to look at and so many people it was somewhat overwhelming, although quite fascinating. Eventually we took a break for coffee at a sidewalk café and just watched the people go by. Around the edges of the plaza, artists displayed paintings and jewelry and tango groups played soulfully. There were tango dancers as well, but they never seemed to be dancing when we went by. From Plaza Dorrego we walked up Libertador Avenue. It was closed to traffic for Sunday and all along the edges were more craft booths and antique vendors. The level of the crafts was much higher than what we had seen in Mendoza overall.

We walked up to the Plaza de Mayo, where the “Pink House” (the equivalent of the White House) is and other large ornamental government buildings. From there we figured out the subway system to get back to our apartment.