I was awake and out of bed at the crack of noon, as I had a packed afternoon schedule ahead of me: drinking a hot chocolate at Cafe Tortoni, one of the city’s Grand Cafes.
While most of the city virtually defines ‘faded grandeur,’ there’s nothing faded about the grand cafes. They’ve been beautifully maintained or restored, and the impressive settings leads to queues of people at the door …
Continue reading Cafe Tortoni; Pablo & Noelia class; and a sociable night at BilongónThe two-tier pricing controversy escalated, so now has a standalone post here.
It’s Alessandra’s first visit to BsAs, and in the first couple of days she wanted to spend every waking moment in the daytime out sightseeing, and then every waking moment at night in milongas. By day five, she finally understood that you can only do that for so long! She visited museums and galleries in the day, and had no energy to dance in the evening; I had a quiet day at home, and was out dancing until 3.30am.
All the same, the night was a first: I left before the end of the milonga! Only 30 minutes before, mind, but still …
Continue reading A rhythmical revelation at Porteño y BailarínAlessandra hasn’t quite grasped that mornings and I have an uneasy relationship at the best of times, and when operating on BsAs milonga time, I view them in much the same light as Guardia Vieja tandas.
Instead, she decided that pre-9am was a good time to suggest going out for coffee, and about an hour later was the perfect time for a Spanish lesson …
Continue reading A very Argentine afternoon, and closing Parakultural at 4amIt was a year ago to the day that I was last here in BsAs for a month-long stay. As a freelance writer, I don’t earn any money when I’m not working, so my last visit was one week of pure holiday, and three weeks working holiday. This was … not a good plan!
Don’t misunderstand me: I had a truly wonderful time. What I did not have was much sleep! So this time I decided to take the financial hit of three weeks’ holiday and just the last week of working in the mornings …
Continue reading A wonderful welcome back to my second home: closing El Beso at 3amThe closure of Salon Canning sounds so terribly wrong even as a written phrase, let alone a reality. Yet it’s true: the most famous milonga venue in the world has closed its doors to tango.
I first heard the news as a rumour, without any linked source, so Googled ‘Salon Canning closing.’ In a bittersweet moment, the first hit was to one of my own blog posts …
Continue reading A eulogy to Salon CanningI debated whether to write this post. Floorcraft is a perennial topic, and the view from friends who’ve been in London tango far longer than I have is that nothing is going to change, so there’s not a lot of point in yet another discussion about it.
But at the same time, it is without question one of the biggest differences between tango in Buenos Aires, and that of London – and during my recent month-long stay in Argentina, I came to see the topic in a whole new light …
Continue reading Not just another grumble about the F wordLast time when I returned home from BsAs, I found myself wishing that London tango were more like, well, Argentine tango. I mean, I looked forward to dancing with friends and favourite partners, of course. But I felt the contrast keenly in a number of ways.
This time too. The difference was deciding that, while there are factors I can’t control, there are others that I can – whether directly or indirectly …
Continue reading Bringing a little Buenos Aires back to London with meI said at the beginning of the trip that I’d be adopting a more relaxed approach this time around, after last time visiting 25 milongas in 12 days.
One reason for staying here a month is to take things easy – an absolute maximum of one milonga per day. Yes, really. Honestly. You’ll see.
This claim was met with a certain amount of scepticism (‘100%’ is a certain amount, right?) …
Continue reading Saying farewell to Buenos Aires with one last milonga – and one last protestIn a city in which anything can happen, and frequently does, this afternoon still stood out! This was followed by a curfew-busting visit to Salon Canning.
It was the second time this trip that I got to hear my favourite orchestra play, but the first time I could actually dance to it …
Continue reading Ending an amazing day dancing to Romantica Milonguera playing live in Salon CanningI wanted to spend a little time hanging out with Pugliese, Troilo, Gardel, Caro, Di Sarli and D’Arienzo. Admittedly they’re all getting on a bit, and none of them are very talkative these days, but it would seem rude to be in Buenos Aires without visiting them.
Cementerio de la Chacarita is huge! Recoleta Cemetery, which had seemed pretty large when we visited it, would fit inside this one eighteen times. Terry had sent me a couple of links with approximate locations for each tomb, and finding most of them was straightforward (guide to follow), though D’Arienzo was a little harder to track down …
Continue reading Bizarre things that only happen in BsAs #792: Being asked to dance in front of Carlos Gardel’s tomb
journey of a trainee tanguero 
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