Writing and reading, tuna in a tiny pita, and a walk in the Botanical Gardens, were just the ticket for a day of rest. Let´s not forget a needed nap in anticipation of a full evening.
The evening started out by being concerned about winding up in a neighborhood that was mentioned as not very safe at night, La Boca. Because every map I´ve received has a different orientation, north, west, south on top, I´m totally confused. I couldn´t tell until I got to Plaza de Mayo, that I was about to walk through that dangerous section near dusk. I think I was saved by a thunderous storm that wouldn´t let up. I´d left my pancho in the B&B, of course.
My first refuge was Basilica San FranciscoÑ would you know it. Mindy´s partner, Jackie, is probably being helped to the ´bagno´laughing hysterically right now. She no doubt thinks we pagans need a little humility once in a while.
When it stopped for a moment, I ranto my next refuge, an expresso bar, where I drank two while it poured. A man at the next table who was watching the weather channel told me to be careful because the winds promised to be vry strong. Great! Now I had two things to worry about.
A break in the weather got me to a charming and busy looking restaurant. You know how it is: once it´s charming, even though you read the menu in the window, you really don´t know what you read. It turned ou be be a sufficeintly de-classe pizze cafe to have ambiance aplenty.
A broad assortment of pizzas, ensalades, postes, and Johnny Walker Black, which I used to drink excusively forty years ago. The hot snack they served with the drink resembled the pizza I had ordered. When I finished it, they served the white pizza. It looked just like the free hors-dóeuvre. By the time I finished the pizza and Quilmes, I didn´t care if it rained. It was, and I ot wet on the way to the concert that I had understood my host to say was a song and dance tango show starting at 10pm (my usual bedtime).
Dino Saluzzi is evidently well known and liked in Argentina. His orchestra and he played a combination tango/jazz. He played with a Yitzrak Pearlman emotional outlay. It gave one a good sense of Argentinian classical guitars and the bandagno (spelling); it looks like a concertina, which Maestro Saluzzi played extraordinarily like a finely tuned instrument, certainly a counterintuitive expectation from a poorly acquainted observer like myself. The guitarists, drummer and wind instrumentalist accompanied him very effectively. It felt like a special Argentian experience. Sometimes it just pays to walk through the rain and not stay home and give up.
