Carly´s Perspective of Our New Sitch in San Telmo

A new chapter
Posted on November 12, 2010 by carlyjk

So, keeping some of the old and mixing it with a bit of new. Our new neighbourhood reflects this sentiment perfectly.

San Telmo is one of the oldest if not the oldest Barrio of Buenos Aires. The rich used to live here in the colonial style mansions (which have since been made into apartments) until an outbreak of Yellow Fever made them abandon their homes and move to Recoletta to create a shiny new city with lots of reflective surfaces in which to admire themselves in.

This area of San Telmo is brightly coloured with a cliche ‘up and coming’ sign hung round its neck by all of the up to date guide books. We live opposite a great organic cafe, an amazing Armenian restaurant, a sushi place, an ice cream parlour and a nice cheap supermarket. There are fruit and meat stalls in the Mercardo where you can get even cheaper groceries and if you feel like doing your shopping outside there are plenty of street stalls where you can get all kinds of things.

Walking around the broken concrete pavements or chipped tiled sidewalks you often get faint waft of dog crap or a fully blown assault on your nostrils. The men stare at you and blatantly call out, the traffic is relentless, the air is dry and carries the lumps of grit light enough to be whipped from the ground by the random sleuths of wind that try to get up your skirt (especially Erin’s) and the streets towards the end of Peru are crowded. Outside our apartment it is much calmer. The buildings are never too high so you get a good view of the sky. There are less people walking around and there are much less cars driving down the side streets.