Buenos Aires is said to be the Paris of the South. Indeed, Buenos Aires has many of the same traits that make Paris the city it is today. Both cities have an extensive Metro, tiny shops along the old cobblestone roads, traffic on the paved roads, a great importance on fashion, and tiny boutique restaurants, bakeries and hotels. Let me describe for you the current whose flows and eddies weave together to create the tapestry of Buenos Aires. Let us start at the lower left corner. Here we see the city streets with traffic bustling about. LOOK! There on top of a tower is the Pepsi Dog Bobble-head, a massive canine head that slowly nods at a Pepsi can. And there! The “Ninth of July” street! The 2^nd widest avenue in the world, with 14 street widths, and in the center of the avenue we see a massive obelisk. On Aids awareness day, that obelisk donned a massive, red, balloon-like material covering. Some of our more educated or dirty minded readers may realize to what I refer. We zoom out from our current section; it has a muted gray and cheerful yellow and melancholy blue throb.

We proceed onward to the lower right corner, ahh, if focuses on the citie’s cafes. After a pleasantly chilly walk we arrive to one of the most famous cafes in Buenos Aires, Café Tortoni. We enter and are greeted by man in a suit and the wonderful happiness that comes with leaving a cold and refreshing street and entering a warm, cozy, and happy café. We see patrons buying a “Submarine”. Surely they don’t mean the big metal one!!! And there is no submarine sandwich  on the menu! But behold! The waiter brings them a glass of hot milk and a submarine! A chocolate submarine! And as a submarine is supposed to do, they proceed to dunk their submarine in to their milk and make themselves a hot chocolate. With the blissful feeling that comes after a repast like this, we depart the café, get snapped awake by the cold and proceed to zoom out of this corner, reveling in the warm color of chocolate and the icy blue and dark red of the warmth and cold.

    

Now we go to the upper right corner. Here we zoom past the intricacies and details of life in Buenos Aires. Rowing clubs, schools with rooms of children in school uniforms, boy with little vests and khakis and girls in Catholic Schoolgirl uniform variations sit there jotting in their notebooks, we see a deep love of dogs  (some wear soccer jerseys) we see bikes riding past laundromats folding their last load, chefs cooking, soccer players to be doing drills, and this corner has a purple glow with red, green, yellow and blue streaks zooming along in little chores that no-one will ever know about, while thicker lines plow heedlessly ahead, and the medium lines meet, greet, and meld with other lines to become bigger. Now we go to the last corner but almost immediately we zoom back out. This is the corner where the bad things are. Angry emotions, horror and betrayal, illness, ruined careers, crime and poverty reside here. This is the dump of the city. All cities have them. All of them do their best to stash them away and hide them. This corner is black with undercurrents of violent red, deep petrid green, yellow jaggedy horror, and the colossal grey pathway of hopelessness. Many walk it. Leaving this sad place we go to the left middle. FOOD! Steak, pizza, pasta, pastries, sweets, sodas, wines, alcohol, and waiters are the cynosure. The flavors and sensations you get from this part of Buenos Aires are amazing. The steak is the best you have ever tasted! The wine is great (so I am told) and the waiters kind. No wonder that when we zoom out we see that this is a bright yellow, green, blue, brown, and white section. We will surely visit here again.

Now we are in the lower middle. There is not much here but it is essential for the overall color of Buenos Aires. Here is the varying temperature of Buenos Aires. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter. Perfect in between. It throbs with every variant of orange and blue imaginable with a thin line of white in between. Oh boy, our next visit is the massive place that Porteños (people who live in Buenos Aires) have kept for soccer…BLAST!!! The game is on! A stadium of cheering crowds form a thunderous roar as players run about on the field below. We have the luck to be at a Boca game. Boca fans are the most violent, so we sit on their side and in the top rafters. They have been known to throw flaming pamphlets and dump cups of pee on the opposing fans if they are below. The Boca fans in the large standing area are pumping their arms and Boca colored banners and umbrellas to a song that they chant throughout the entire match. Across sit the Newell fans, hoisting a banner that mostly covers their bleachers. The fans underneath patiently wait until the next time they take it down. Police stand on either side of a spiked fence to make sure the fans stay separate. Boca wins 1-0. We zoom out, and are stunned at the little embroideries of league ladders that make up this spot. We are at the 2^nd to last part of the tapestry; the homes and neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. Massive neighborhood compounds mix with apartments. Children play everywhere. Friends drop by out of the blue. Life is great. Lakes and beautiful scenery decorate the suburb compounds and parks adorn the apartment buildings. Families always stay close together. What else could you want? We zoom out and see the color of happiness. What color did you see? Here we are; the center of the tapestry. There stands a gargantuan citadel with 50 feet high golden doors. We climb the steps and as we approach the doors, they open and out streams a blinding shower of color and light, the light that spreads over all of Buenos Aires, to enhance and negate the colors to make the overall tapestry. It is the home of Buenos Aires’ people. These people are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. Kissing you on the cheek for greetings and goodbyes. Taking you in when you are just a stranger. Welcoming you when you are intruding. Being the best friends you could ask for. This is not a generalization, but a fact. If you are a friend, and lucky enough to get an invitation to anywhere, go—and you shall come back as part of their family. The families are what make Buenos Aires. Now we zoom out for the last time, and our suspicions are realized. Buenos Aires is a Rainbow. P.S.  A few of the pictures here are right outside our door - living in the local neighborhood with laundromat, pizzeria and barber.