One of the greatest joys in life is getting lost between the covers of a great book. And, to me, it’s always a bonus if I get the opportunity to travel to interesting places. I love to travel. The more unusual the local, the more I like it, both in books and in real life.
Since I can’t take you all with me on my real travels, I thought it would be nice to give you virtual tours. I’ll try to focus on places I’ve mentioned in my books as a way to expand on what I’ve already shared, but every once in a while I’ll throw in a place I just happen to think is cool.
My first tango
La Boca
We’ll
begin with La Boca. You might have noticed the colorful buildings/buttons at
the top of my website. These were inspired by a barrio, or neighborhood, in
Buenos Aires, Argentina called La Boca. Homes and buildings are actually
painted in a quilt like patchwork of bright reds, blues, yellows, and greens.
Though this looks interesting to us today and bit like a cubist painting, originally homes were painted this way out of necessity. Impoverished Italian immigrants used left over paint from the ship yards to paint their homes which where also constructed with whatever they could salvage from repairing ships: wood and sheets of metal.
La Boca (the mouth) named for its location at the mouth of the river Richuela became notorious in it’s early history for its brothels and violence, and later for it’s industrial nature and catering to sailors who stayed in port for the pubs, cafes, many cantinas, and good Italian meals.
The
most famous street in La Boca today is El Caminito, the little path. This name
is most well known as the title of one of Carlos Gardel’s tangos. Since La Boca
has been credited with giving birth to the tango – it seems fitting. This
cobblestone pedestrian street with French Baroque street lamps still maintains
the flavor of the barrio while at the same time welcoming visitors like an
open-air museum. Though this neighborhood is still very much a working class
barrio, El Caminito has become an artist colony and on the weekends a great
place for tourists to visit, take pictures with bronze tango dancers or other
street performers, and to buy great art.
One of the reasons Buenos Aires is such an interesting city to visit, is that it is made up of forty-six eclectic neighborhoods of which La Boca is only one. Definitely worth a stroll before catching a soccer game at the nearby Boca Juniors Stadium – another feather in La Boca’s cap is that it is the original home of soccer legend, Diego Maradona.
Then of course if it were me, I’d go out for an Italian dinner in the evening or perhaps to a good tango bar in San Telmo – but we’ll leave this neighborhood to perhaps explore someday in the future.
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