Wednesday turned out to be a day of rest for us. The weather was cold and rainy and we were needing a vacation from our vacation and chilled out all day long. On Tuesday, however, we managed to stumble on a unique tour. We aren’t really the type of traveller that goes on organized tours, but we try to find some culture when we travel and this time we found a great one.

Buenos Aires has a thousand museums that cover just about everything. There are some obscure ones: the prison museum, museum of firearms and even a museum dedicated to the history of taxation (surely a fun one!). Of course there are the usual fine arts museums such as the museum of modern art and a few dedicated to specific Argentine artists. But we ended up where a lot of people don’t think to go: the national opera house, Teatro Colon. We were among only 12 or so people in the English language tour and we shared the space mainly with groups of school kids that we’d pass on the stairs as we made our way through.

The big advantage of this kind of tour is that there are usually few people and you get to go into parts of the theater no patron gets to see. The Colon (pronounced like the scent you wear and not like the body part) went through three architects before it was finished. Apparently none could stay alive long enough to finish the thing. The result of their three styles, however, makes for a magnificent blend. The entry hall is in three colors of Italian marble: white, black and a beautiful mustard yellow. This is the only place you can take pictures; the rest of tour it off limits to cameras. Then again, if you went to a museum instead you wouldn’t get any pics at all. All told, we got to sit in the president’s box and watch a rehearsal of the national ballet company. We learned many of the auditorium’s secrets. The huge chandelier, for example, lowers from it’s gold-leafed recess. This was no surprise. The ring surrounding this recess, however, is actually a catwalk. You can’t tell this from below, but in shows requiring a voice of god, or other heavenly sounds, up to 15 singers can perform unseen from above. The auditorium still has ¬widow boxes,¬which are blackened seating areas blocked from the view of the rest of the audience. Widows who were still in their 2 year mourning period could come to the opera and enjoy the show while avoiding the scandal of being seen having a good time. Today, widows can do as they please and the boxes are used as sound studios where recordings are made of the performances.

We traipsed down three levels below ground to see the comstume makers, the shoemakers, the props artists, the set design and construction studios and the practice halls for both orchestra and dance. Much here is done the way it was in 1908 when the theater opened. For example, the huge backdrops are painted in the traditional way with the huge canvases laid out on a vast floor. The artists stand on a balcony overlooking the floor and they use 20-foot long poles with brushes on the end to paint. This allows them to see their work as they do it and spares their back and knees had they done the work from close-up. The immense labyrinth stretches beyond the bounds of the theater and under the 9 Julio Boulevard (which is 16 lanes wide and a pedestrian nightmare). It has to be big for they have 20,000 pairs of shoes and 80,000 costumes! As one of the largest and oldest opera houses in the Americas, it lends sets and costumes to other houses around the world. We saw several large crates containing costumes being returned from the Los Angeles Opera.

Here’s a quick rundown on the usual things we’re asked about, but haven’t mentioned:

# The weather: The weekend was sunny, but cold. Both of us had to buy stocking caps because a biting wind whirled down the streets. Our hands and feet were numb by the end of the soccer game on Sunday. Monday and Tuesday had a bit of a warm up with temps in the high 50s or low 60s. The sun is back after yesterday’s rain so we’re going to get out of the city and hit the Tigre river delta. We’ll take a train there this morning and my return tonight or tomorrow, depending on how we like it.

# Food: Every restaurant has a huge menu of choices. Unfortunately, they all have the same choices: pasta, pizza (which is literally everywhere you turn) and beef (every part of the cow, including the eyes). On Tuesday, we’d had enough of that and found a nice little Japanese sushi restaurant. Once inside, we noticed that no Asians worked there so the authenticity of the menu came under suspicion. When we saw the sushi menu, we got a little trepidatious, giddy like two kids about to do something dangerous. The choices of fish were limited to salmon and halibut and when it came to ordering rolls and sets, the chef chooses what you get and not you. We braved it and it was not at all bad. Two days later, neither of us are sick so the adventure was worth it.

We’re sure to have a lot more to tell you about after our excursion to Tigre. It’ll be good to get out of the city and away from the soot, fumes and smog. Talk to you again soon,

The Boys