Shopping mecca

All in all, our early shopping experiences in Buenos Aires were quite disappointing. That's mostly because we hit too many malls and run-of-the-mill retail shopping areas (such as Santa Fe Ave.) right off the bat. We felt like we could have been in any large city in the United States. Add in the difficulty of shopping with a language barrier, and what's the point?

Then came our first weekend in BsAs, and we finally found what we were looking for. On Saturday, we walked to nearby Palermo Veijo, the oldest and prettiest part of the sprawling Palermo neighborhood. On weekends, a bustling market sets up in and around Plaza Serrano, with artisans selling all manner of handmade items. In addition, several of the bars around the plaza offer up their floor space to small-scale designers...it's easy to become overwhelmed by the racks and racks of cute clothing (mostly for women, but some for men, too). We did some extra wandering around the neighborhood, finding shop after shop that was much more interesting and unique than anything we'd seen in busier commercial districts.

On Sunday, we had a very different, yet complementary, shopping experience. The San Telmo street fair is a sprawling affair that centers itself in Plaza Dorrego, but spreads far and wide in all directions, mostly up and down Ave. Defensa. While there were many booths operated by artisans selling their own goods, the main reason to come to San Telmo on a Sunday is to shop for antiques and other used items. I can't even begin to estimate how many complete sets of silverware we saw for sale. And jewelry...if we come back next year, that's what I'm shopping for (this year was more about the leather). 

One of our target items at San Telmo was old seltzer bottles. Of course, the one J zeroed in on was the most expensive, at 215 pesos (about $60 US). It was from the 1920s, it was blue, the glass had a beautiful pattern, and the metal top piece was from the same manufacturer as the rest of the bottle. All those factors make the pesos add up. It was absolutely beautiful, but we instead chose two less expensive ones (one from the 1950s, one from the 1960s, which we got for 100 pesos total.

The San Telmo fair is about more than just shopping. Street musicians and performers were everywhere. 

We plan to dodge Saturday's forecasted thundershowers to return to Palermo Veijo, and arrange our packing schedule so that we can hit San Telmo before we begin our arduous plane trip back home on Sunday (need we mention that we are NOT looking forward to another 11-hour flight? Oh, well.)