Hablar Espanyol?

San Telmo street art

"Eres bobo" means 'you are a fool' in Spanish. This was Pablo's final lesson to us today and you can bet it's one of the only phrases we remember after five days of spanish lessons in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires.

Still, we can’t fault Pablo as a teacher. He was a wealth of knowledge about Argentina, Argentines and, of course, Buenos Aires. Under his tutelage, we learnt about choripan and chimmichurri, the murderous rivalry between local football teams River Plate and Boca Juniors, the history of tango, how to order our Bife de lomo and cervasa, and which was the best local vino tinto our money could buy.

We’re already starting to put these lessons to good use: late nights bar hopping through San Telmo; monstrous steaks washed down by generous amounts of red wine in Palermo; and afternoons exploring the streets of La Boca and Recoleto.

Tonight we're off to an underground tango club and tomorrow we're off to see River Plate take on Boca Juniors in the first pre-season derby of the season. Carl swears it was just coincidence, arriving in Buenos Aires the week of the first pre-season derby between local rivals, Boca Juniors and River Plate. I'm not convinced, but there was certainly no avoiding it.

Fluent Spanish will hopefully come later?

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