(Or, what I did and I had a great time)

Lodging: Yira Yira Guest House.

For $15 a night, the price is a steal. But don’t be put off, it approaches hospital-clean; has brand new mattresses, sheets, towels; and is in the middle of a hip neighborhood. Oh, and it’s got a wireless network.

Tour Guide: Bitch Tours.

Yes, I actually, of my own volition, allowed someone else to lead me around for a few hours. The Diva tailored the tour to my interests (history, art, and culture… not the touristy beaten-path). We went to several art projects involved in recycling stuff from the street and making it into beautiful stuff (including books! I violated my no-more-book-buying rule) and to a factory that had been taken over by its employees when the owners faked a bankruptcy. A factory that makes ingredients for ice-cream.

Asado: local friends.

This isn’t quite the thing you can find on the web. Well, maybe it is. Anyway, the chorizo was kick-ass and made by the butcher down the street.

Ice-Cream: Volta or Freddo.

I can’t decide which one is better. They both have a few low calorie options which are fantastic. I tried a bunch of combinations of dulce de leche and chocolate.

Pizza: El Cuartito.

Talcahuano 937. I strayed and went to another pizza place close to Plaza Italia. Later on that day, I returned, repentant and mollified. Follow Danny’s suggestion, get a slice of the fuggazetta.

Tango Show: Mundial de Baile de Tango.

I’d look for the free stuff, like the chance to see the world’s best competing for the title, rather than shelling out $100 (US) for something overly glitzy. Also, I prefer salon tango rather than tango de escena, which is more of the stuff you’d see performed on a stage with the women doing flips all around the guy. The Buenos Aires city tourist site will have details on such things.

Beer and Burger: El Almacén (aka Hermanos Cao).

Those of us who frequent O’Reilly’s on Fridays (some of us twice on Fridays) would feel perfectly content to make the switch.

Folksy Gaucho Festival: Feria de Mataderos.

Every third Sunday of the month, people gather to buy wooden accoutrements for their asado, hand-worked mate stuff, and to dance while wearing traditional gaucho wear. One guy even had a blade shoved in the back of his pants for all to see.

Wine: Yes.

Felipe Rutini from the private stash of local friends. This bottle was at an entirely different level from the quite drinkable bottles that can be found at reasonable prices throughout the city.

Pane e Vino at The Village in Recoleta. My only regret is that I haven’t made it back because the bartenders were super helpful and recommended an amazing tempranillo with a complex and delightful bouquet.

Vampire Hangout: Recoleta Cemetery.

It’s open during the day and you can peak over some of the walls at night.

Craft Market: Plaza Francia.

This is next to the aforementioned vampire hangout and takes place on Sundays.

Contemporary Art: Appetite.

Chacabuco 551. The latest and most cutting-edge (and edgiest) stuff can be found here. They’re opening up in Brooklyn, too, I hear.

Danza Arabe: Nora Farah.

Um… yeah.

Tourist Traps/Worth Walking Through Once: La Boca, Avenida Florida.

Pretty brightly colored houses, but why buy anything here? The only thing Avenida Florida has that’s actually good is the tangueros on the street, otherwise it’s Times Square. They even forced the artisans off the street because they were adding too much color.

Important in the Past, Pretty in the Present: Café Tortoni.

This an obligatory stop on any literary pilgrimage of Argentina. All the greats spent time here (kinda like Chomley’s except that, unlike NYC, it never had a life as a speak-easy because Argentines wouldn’t even pretend to accept a farce like prohibition).

Book store, cafe, gem: El Ateneo.

Avenida Santa Fe. It really is as beautiful as the pictures look. And with free wireless and a solid cafe, why not spend hours here?

Lodging: Hotel Asunción Palace.

On Colón and Palma in the Centro. This runs between $25-30 a night and in a past life served as the mansion of one of the Lopez brothers before turning into a hospital during the disastrous War of the Triple Alliance.

Guaraní Classes: Idelguap/Falevi

On Eusebio Ayala and 2 de Mayo. You can also study Spanish here, if that’s your thing.

Modern, Contemporary, Indigenous Art: Museo del Barro.

Open Thursday – Sunday only and it’s a place I’ll keep re-visiting.

Pastel Mandi’o: Ña Eustaquia

Filled with carne (so’o), chicken, choclo (fresh corn and cheese), and other yummies. These can be found in all the shoppings (the annoying loan word from English which means “mall” in Latin America and causes great trouble when they try to learn English and don’t realize that it’s not a noun… sometimes a gerund, but never ever a synonym for “mall”).

Chipa: Doña Chipa

These can be found throughout the city. The stuffed ones are amazing. There’s one in the Centro on Palma.

Internet Café: hmm.

The Ciber on Palma next to the Plaza Independencia is most consistent on speed and porn-free-ness of the machines. They also serve coffee, should you ask, and have computers where you can use a USB drive. However, take heed when you’re at computer 3… it’s got the computer equivalent of a self-destruct button. If consistent speed and porn-free-ness is not your bag, or if you want to check email any time of the day, there’s a 24 hour Ciber King a few blocks away, right next to Playboy Cabaret. You get the idea.

Havanna café on Mariscal Lopez and Republica Argentina if you’re using your own laptop.

Cultural Events for Free: Centro Juan de Salazar.

This also has the Cervantes library. I’d suggest checking out events on a weekly basis: the art, concerts, lectures, poetry readings, book launches are fabulous.

Literary Cafe: El Cafe Literario

Across from El Chaco Hotel on México near the Plaza Uruguaya. It’s closed on weekends, but it’s important. It’s the first of its kind in Asunción.

Tourist Traps: None

Paraguay doesn’t get many tourists and so there really isn’t an economy oriented on gouging them with bright shiny wastes of time.

Market: Mercado 4

This is where you can get corn, ratchets, sneakers, and your cell phone unlocked. You can also find nice work in clay and an over-abundance of clay frogs. When I asked why, they said frogs are for good luck.

Silver: Luque

This is the town next to Asunción and you can get there on colectivo (the buses that cost 2000 G, or, about $.40). Here they sell filigree earrings, rings, necklaces, bracelets beautiful enough to arouse envy and wonder even on the jaded subways of New York. However, when I asked where the silver originally comes from, the response I got was, “That is the question.”

Asado: the guy on the street.

The best grilled food can be found for 3000 G on the streets of Asunción. They’ll serve it to you with boiled yuca (what they call mandioca o mandi’o) that you eat with your hands.

British Embassy: gone, with no explanation.

They closed up shop last year or the year prior and everyone is wondering why they left.

Craft Market: Plaza Independencia.

These stalls are open every day and here you’ll be able to buy studs for your various piercings as well as finely worked tablecloths and handmade coconut jewelry.

The Lonely Planet guidebook to Buenos Aires says "Maybe it's the beautiful, model-like women sauntering down hip Av Florida, or the handsome dark men power-suiting their way under the classic buildings in the financial district" (2005:8). And when I prepared to go to Porto Alegre, I read the comment on a respectable travel website "[Porto Alegre] is widely known in Brazil as the city with the most beautiful women in the country."

Such remarks are often accompanied by descriptions of how European Buenos Aires and Porto Alegre are. And, sure, there is much beauty to be seen here. I'm a sucker for wrought iron and Italian architecture. But isn't it possible that there's something a little problematic about the way beauty is being defined here? What strikes me and has me quite unsettled is how, well, racially homogenous both cities are. And how comments about the "beauty" of this part of Latin America, by their very nature comparative to other (less "beautiful"? more native? more African?) parts of the region, have a racial component that's unnoticed and uncritiqued.

I was on the subte today and I looked around at the crowded train car and realized that I was the darkest person on the train. This is like the time my sophomore year of college when I had lunch at Eliot House and looked at the packed dining hall and realized that, among hundreds of students, I was one of the three darkest.

The story of the settlement of this region includes a very deliberate policy to whiten the population and downright hostility to immigration from non-European parts of the world.

And now, the tide has turned, and Spain has to deal with a new phenomenon: migration. For the past 500 years, Spain has been a sending country. In less than 30 years, this has reversed and now it finds itself as the destination for Latin Americans (as well as North Africans). What to do about the spike in [undocumented] immigration, the sounds of Latin American Spanish on the streets and in the restaurants, applications for citizenship based on the nationality of a grandmother who scrambled to a rural village in Latin America because there she wouldn't starve has become a major issue for Spanish politicians, academics, and journalists.

Documentaries, conferences, seminars all wrestle with how to understand what this change means for Spanish identity. All in the context of a growing anti-immigrant sentiment in Spain... a discourse that sounds strikingly similar to that in the US ("they bring crime" "they're taking our jobs"). The newness of this shift makes the Spanish example an incredibly interesting study: a 180 degree change in less than a lifetime.