Home Delivery and Out on the Town

For the last two weeks, we have been holed up in the casa, both sick with a ¨knock-you-on-your-butt¨ flu. Thanks to our friend Daniel the book seller, we have had some great books to read to while away the time. Daniel goes all over Buenos Aires, tracking down estate sales and out of the way book stalls, buying up books in lots of different languages. He has a big bookshelf in a local hostel for selling, but since we are neighbors, we just go over to his house and he pokes around under his bed or in the closet and comes up with a pile of books for us. At first I asked for my long time ¨comfort zone¨ murder mystery books, but slowly he has slipped in more and more other fiction... modern Japanese writers, Irish, and lots of books written by authors who spend time in lands other than their native soil...


We have found two other luxury pleasures as we recuperate. 1. Every restaurant in Belgrano delivers to our house, mostly by bicycle. And 2, we now get weekly home delivery of individual liter seltzer bottles of soda water! You push the plastic lever and out gushes the soda... and high powered soda sometimes too... i cant wait to have a late night soda water war with our next visitors...



Three weeks ago we were both all frisky and energized by getting to spend time with young friends Jason and Malia, down for a whirlwind two week vacation. There´s nothing like playing tour guide to remind you to appreciate the ¨ guide book tourist must sees.¨ It´s easy for me to become jaded regarding crowds and hassle once the event isn´t a virgin experience. For example, we had not been to the San Telmo Saturday Market in the last two years... ¨been there, done that.¨ If we hadn´t gone with ¨the kids,¨we wound have missed this great puppet


show on the street. The guy had a little electric tape player playing a tango song about late night drinking while his puppet twirled on the lamp post in some graceful sloppy dance.






























We took in a big design show... a mad house of local talent showing off their art, fashion, and music.... went on to a jazz show that Dave had wanted to see... then Malia took us to a late night ¨hip¨ Palermo night club in an old restored mansion...met some great arty folks, mingled and eave dropped on bizarre conversations... perhaps Dave and I were the oldest ones there, but we managed to stay til closing at 4 am!!... (and maybe that´s why we caught the flu?).