Buenos Aires for Kids

Occasionally we have a guest post on tangocherie in the spirit of community. As we are now in the middle of Holy Week, many people are on vacation here with their families. Samantha Lister from Tripbase.com offers the following advice on entertaining children in Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires is renowned as a beautiful city seeped in history with many attractions, from gourmet food to designer boutiques and an exhilarating nightlife, including numerous tango clubs.

If you are planning a family trip here, you know it is important to consider everyone however, but what activities are there to keep children entertained? The answer: Buenos Aires is a great, safe city for children of all ages. Across the city, children are very much welcomed and there is a wide variety of vacation ideas to keep the whole family busy.

One attraction definitely worth considering is Palermo Zoo, with over 350 species of animals, including an elephant house, monkey island and a petting area. Palermo’s parks are also a wonderful place to take children, providing the perfect setting for walks, picnics and outdoor sports. You can even hire bicycles or a boat if you’re feeling particularly energetic!

If you’re looking to engage the children as well as entertain them, Buenos Aires also offers an array of educational visits, including a puppet museum, an interactive science museum and a purpose-build children’s museum with a wide range of fun learning opportunities.

You will also find there are a variety of restaurants with children’s menus and hotels that provide facilities for children of all ages, meaning you can enjoy a stress-free break with plenty to see and do for both adults and children alike.

So, whether you are 9 years old or 69 years old, Buenos Aires is sure to offer an array of .activities to suit all tastes and interests. The spirit of Buenos Aires awaits you and all the whole family for a vacation you will never forget…
For more travel tips and vacation inspiration, check out the Tripbase
Travel Blog.





From tangocherie: I agree that Buenos Aires is a great place for kids. In addition to the above ideas including the Children's Museum in the Abasto Shopping Center, I suggest colorful La Boca with street art and mimes (and tango dancing, of course), puppet shows in the parks, the fabulous historical Sarmiento frigate museum in Puerto Madero, AND, reopening this Sunday after 4 months, is the Feria de Mataderos--a kids' delight, what with all the horses, ponies, llamas, delicious street food and live music and dancing.

For tangophiliacs, Nocturna at the Centro Cultural Recoleta is tango and circus under the stars for the whole family.

And what could be more appropriate this week than a visit to the Holy Land, Tierra Santa, the theme park of three religions, where you can remove your shoes to enter a mosque, slip a prayer into the Wailing Wall, and see Jesus' Resurrection every 90 minutes.





Happy Passover!
Happy Easter! Felices Pascuas to you and your family!

April 3rd, Another Place to Dance?

Just to advise everyone that the Milonga de los Consagrados will be closed for one night next Saturday; the salon has been rented out for another event the Easter weekend. So the 300-400 habitues have to find another place to dance this week. Panic, panic!

Meanwhile, last night, unbeknownst to me yet again, there was a surprise birthday cake planned for me, and instead of the traditional "gang vals," I danced a whole vals criollo with Ruben. (Video taken by Guillermo Thorp of Diostango.)










This was the culmination of several days of celebrating my birthday, beginning with a small home gathering on the day itself (last Tuesday) of lovers of Ruben's empanadas Tucumanas.


























Cake and Tango just seem to go together--with wine and empanadas too, of course.







So I segued from the main point of this post, which is once again, that Los Cons is closed this Saturday for one night only. Where will you go to dance? Or better yet, where will we?

Happy Anniversary, La Milonga de los Consagrados

Everyone knows that on Saturday afternoons, Ruben and I are always to be found at Region Leonesa (Humberto Primo 1462) at the milonga where we first danced together, exactly six years ago this month. Last Saturday night was their big anniversary celebration, and in a way, it was our anniversary too.







El Region Leonesa in all it's glory, jammed-packed and happy, with the fantastic orchestra of Ernesto Franco playing on stage.













With the maestro himself.











With Gerry y Lucia, who also performed.





Irene and Man Yung from Toronto were visiting.




Our table was full of flowers: (from right) Gail, Barbara, Flo, Else, me






(Thanks to Gerry y Lucia for some of the photos.)









We had fun!






The organizer, Myriam Rosich, who, along with her brother Daniel (below) took over the milonga last year upon the death of their father, Enrique Rosich. (Enrique would be very, very proud.)








Los Dos Danys celebrated their birthdays, but also Dany Borelli, the best DJ in Buenos Aires, was inaugurated as the new DJ of Los Consagrados. Daniel Rosich, brother of Myriam, is the organizer.









Ruben y Marcela, organizers of Nuevo Chique on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (Marcela took the video above.)







Photographer Gail Miller was snap-happy.

Dancing in Brazil

Oh how the Brazilians love to dance! The monthly magazine all about dance in Brazil--Falando de Danca--has ads for every kind of dance instruction, from classical to the newest rage, Forro. And in between there are Arabe, samba, hip hop samba, bolero, salsa, zouk, and tango. The Brazilians dance while walking down the street.







But they dance in their own way, estilo brasileiro. As the old saying goes, you dance who you are. Ruben and I experienced lots of tango in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, but not much tango estilo milonguero. Brazilians dance big and open and with joy, but are not too interested in connection or a great embrace or floorcraft or expressing nuances of the music. It's MOVE! So naturally the tango there is the same--stage moves, nuevo steps, sexy poses, non-traditional music. It was fun, but not the tango we're used to.


Ruben and I were welcomed so warmly and made to feel so at home in the milongas and workshops. The organizers and dancers were very gracious to us. Our heart goes out especially to Selma Sena, the organizer of the milonga Bistro Mac in a gorgeous museum by the water, who took a week off of work to drive us around in Rio. She was a gift!




This is a little condensed video to give you an idea--yes, that's me dancing with the pibe in white trainers!

It was a wonderful experience to visit tango in fabulous Brazil. But there is nothing like tango in Buenos Aires!

Why Is This Country Dancing? A One-Man Samba to the Beat of Brazil by Jon Krich, Simon & Schuster, 1993, puts it all in perspective, historically, culturally and geographically.

For more info on tango in Brazil:

www.riotango.com.br
www.tangoporsisolo.com.br
criatango.blogspot.com
momentosdetango.blogspot.com
www.bardetango.com.br
riotango.fotoblog.uol.com.br

My Life is a Tango!

Is it a good thing or a bad thing to win a Heartbreak Competition? But of course it's not whose heartbreak was the biggest, but who wrote about it in a tango way. Traditional tangos are full of sad stories of broken hearts.

Life is full of heartbreak and ache of one kind or another and writing about it can be cathartic. I'm thrilled that something I wrote was selected by a panel of judges to be the "best." The heartache is still there, but winning anything makes you feel better.

My life with so much drama and loss and tragedy always was a "tango," and now here's the proof. My little autobiographical vignette, The Key, from my unpublished memoir, The Tango Dancer, won first prize in the competition and will be turned into a tango song with words and music by Marian Barry.

The contest was to promote Maria Finn's new book, Hold Me Close and Tango Me Home.

Here's my winning entry:

THE KEY

My old house sits under the full moon of Hollywood as I drive past where I lived so long ago. As always, the street’s ancient cedar trees perfume the air, and in the black night, the glimmering Observatory hovers above like a friendly space ship.

The courtyard gates are locked, but the closed windows shine from within and call to my heart. The drawn draperies glow like a candle in the window lit for me, calling me home.

It looks just the same as when I lived there so content with my husband, my children, my beautiful life—all gone now.

Perhaps inside the wrought-iron gates and behind the cozy golden windows is my old lost life. Maybe if I stare long and hard enough, I can catch a shadow of a vanished time, the comings and goings of a happy family. If only I had the key, maybe I could go in and find it all again.

What if I found the key and opened the door into another dimension, and came home?




Painting by Michael Austin

Coming Home, Buenos Aires!

A pot pourri of images from our two weeks in Brazil:
















































Art on the walls in the milonga in Sao Paulo.






















The Bistro Mac where our hostess Selma Sena has her milonga on Sundays in Rio de Janeiro.


















After the first week of floods and constant rains, this week had record breaking heat of more than 40 degrees C. We're hoping BsAs weather is somewhat less extreme.