The cheese stands alone

Kate and Quad were amazing guests.  I hope they had a good time visiting.  I had a great time exploring the city with them.  I took in many more sites than I ever would have on my own.

One of my fellow yoga students asked me to share some of my favorite tourist activities in Buenos Aires.  She has a friend coming in next week and wanted some ideas.  I mentioned the ones I've already covered here on the blog and then remembered one I didn't write about-- Fundacion Proa.

Proa is a contemporary art museum in La Boca section of Buenos Aires.  La Boca is the site of the Boca Juniors soccer club.  There are two main soccer clubs in the city-- Boca Juniors and Atletico River Plate (Both of the official team names are in English-- which is amusing).  The stadiums are at either end of the city.  Quad did some major field research about the teams and tells me that Boca fans are very working class while River Plate are more upmarket.  Kate and I traveled to La Boca on a city bus, un colectivo, and caught  glimpses of the stadium down the occasional side street.

La Boca section of the city is known for some pretty tough streets, the stadium, a little commercial section called El Caminito ("little walkway"), and brightly painted houses sided with corrugated metal.  Proa is a beautiful building in a colorful and edgy neighborhood.  The exhibition was odd-- lots of digital media with videos and film clips.  The main exhibit was called "Of Bridges and Borders"--some pieces were inscrutable and abstract.  One memorable piece was a series of interviews with a Senegalese immigrant, Mouhamadou Bamba Diop, about his journey from Africa to the Canary Islands to Madrid.  The interview was combined with a beautiful silent documentary film of modern Senegal interspersed with scenes of the man's life in Madrid and a printed transcript of the interview on the wall.  The interview was lengthy and while I only sat to listen to for ten minutes or so, I was so moved by this man's story.  It reminded me that millions of people make the incredibly brave decision to leave the place they know and love because they have to.

Other than spending some quality minutes with the truly valiant Mr. Diop, the highlight of the trip to Proa was the rooftop cafe.  The weather was gorgeous, other museum visitors vacated an outside table/bench just as we arrived, and the scene for a perfect post-museum lunch was set.

[Outside the cafe looking in]

[Happy]

[Kate peruses the menu; Annie contemplates the upcoming Red Sox season.]

[Honest-to-god vegetables served in the city of Buenos Aires!!  Spinach and asparagus torta.]

[Brightly painted houses]

[View from the museum cafe.]

I abandoned.... um, left Kate to watch a free outdoor milonga (place where the tango is danced) right outside the museum and headed home on the colectivo.  I can't help but share this picture of a fellow passenger's hair: