Out of Our Front Door

I totally copied this entire post from Carly. This in collaboration with the pictures I have taken should give you a feel for the neighborhood of Recoleta in our lovely city of Buenos Aires.

¨Maybe I was getting so wrapped up in how I was feeling and just trying to get everything that was happening down I forgot to describe the things that are starting to become part of everyday life for me.

I step out of my huge apartment block door and onto the paved sidewalk (as the Americans would say). The pavements are punctuated with small trees every ten metres or so and give the area a congenial feel, like you might just want to go for a stroll and window shop in the glamorous glass fronted boutiques. Every other shop is a shoe shop. People know how to organise things here and minimalistic window displays are the norm, Mary Portas would find nothing to do here. There are elegant cafes with pies displayed behind glass counters, bakeries and pastry shops with floor to ceiling window displays of icing sugar dusted crumblyness. I always end up walking behind extremely well dressed older women (all wearing completely matching, often neutral if not, paradoxically turquoise outfits) sporting doddery heads of perfectly coifed, dyed hair complete with thinning patch.

I pass fashionable dressed and attractive young women wearing the better pick of last month’s fashions. Cool slightly baggy T’s or sleeveless tops and skinny or slightly baggy jeans. Cool jewelery worn casually, nothing obviously matching, amazing leather boots that finish at the knee complete with a long zip from bottom to top, maybe Doc Martin style.

So I walk past the fancy chair shops selling various different chairs with various different coverings and the handmade jewellery shops and the hundreds of shoe shops and I never stop to go in any of them. I walk past the marble fronted apartments with the smart porters standing at the doors or sat inside at the desk. I watch the smartly kids in uniform walk arm in arm across the roads and the gorgeous well behaved dogs prancing down the roads looking happy with their little tails wagging.

Then I have to get on the bus…¨