Carlos Gardel's House in the neighborhood of Abastos

I just spent a week in Buenos Aires, buying new tango shoes and taking lessons with some tango greats. It was a shoe shopping frenzy with tango filled nights (which, btw, had the added bonus of the movie star sighting of William DaFoe out canoodling with a very young girlfriend. He can act, but he can't dance tango yet. I tried to get Rene to wrench him and the lady apart and ask him to dance. While we both agreed that moment would make an excellent photo, she never did it. Rene and I strolled the streets of this design oriented city, and from the balconies, cemeteries, to restaurants and shops they use plants in ways that make this lovely city an even more pleasant experience.

I went by the botanical garden in Palermo. It's a little disheveled, but a good place to learn the names of the trees. People in Buenos Aires claim they have very cold winters, but from all the tropical and subtropical plants, I tend to doubt it. Maybe very cold for them.

If you're in to feral cats, this is a great botanical garden.. Perhaps it's the Italian influence, but there are prides of cats all over the grounds here.

Pretty residential door in Palermo Viejo.

A nice fountain in the garden of Olsen, a Scandinavian restaurant in Palermo Viejo.

Also at Olsen, this is a simple, nice modern touch.

We never learned what this is--it looks like a shrine of some sort. It's near railroad tracks and at night there's lots of young men hanging out here. We coined them, "The Bad Boys".

A purse store in Palermo Soho--even the stores use backyard plantings and atriums to create nice atmospheres.