A parakeet named La Boca

Saturday, February 25th, 2006

Colorful, tiny, and noisy barrio of La Boca is a tight cluster of cafes, shops, and papier-mâché life size figurines. The day we chose to visit it was already packed with activities like moving to a different hostel, as we were not enjoying the company of our new uninvited roommates the Cucarachas, and we also had a dance class later that day, but nevertheless we decided to walk.
We are staying in San Telmo, a neighboring barrio, so it wasn’t exactly far away, but still, the less then scenic walk to La Boca was a waste of time. Since we did not care much for the football stadium we went straight to the main street where we got simply bombarded with flyers from pretty much every cafe on the block. Quiet but pushy, the vendors were persistent, but not very convincing. To us, their determination was more off-putting than anything else and we stayed away until one sign, with a very familiar name for us, caught our eye – El Samovar De Rasputin. With a name like that, how were we not to go in! Inside, as was to be expected, was absolutely nothing Russian whatsoever and my attempt to joke about it with the waitress went completely over her head. Nevertheless, we were hungry, and they had the exact same food as any other joint in sight, so we stayed. At first, I was a bit disappointed we would not get to see the Tango show that other places were offering, but that worry quickly went away as pretty much every where you’d look in La Boca you’d see somebody dancing Tango for spare change. After lunch we walked around for a bit among the colorful artisan vendors and the even more colorful houses that La Boca is so famous for. They are actually quite remarkable with some walls colored in four different colors and vibrant signs in their fronts. La Boca was cute, but very loud and a bit repetitive so after we made sure we saw all there was to see, we took a cab back to San Telmo.