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Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Day 13

We didn’t get to bed until 3 A.M. the previous night, so we had a long lie in before we headed out to get some food later in the afternoon.

We had seen online that it was threatening thunder showers for the next 3 days but forgot the umbrella and the ponchos. We stopped by a small street side café we’d spotted on previous outings. Kami had a brownie with Dulce de Leche on top, and I just had a lemonade. As I've mentioned before, the service in Buenos Aires is very laid back compared to other countries, and even a small button on the table to call the waiter or  for the bill didn't improve the speed--I had to press it a few times!

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As we were sat in the restaurant, I could see the sky getting blacker and blacker, then the wind started kicking up really bad, and just as we were able to leave, the heavens opened—not only with rain, but also with huge, and I mean HUGE, pieces of ice raining down!!! People were scrambling to put cardboard, carpet, rubber car mats, or anything they could find on their car roofs and bonnets to save them from denting!

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I've never seen ice fall from the sky like it did then. It wasn't hail as such, but chunks of ice. As Kami and I were stood in a doorway sheltering, we got talking to a local guy who said it happens every so often, and if you look at cars as you walk around, you can see the dents from previous ice storms! He also said it was a big issue with insurance companies in Argentina who didn’t want to cover these damages!

As well as ice, there was rain and lots of it—so much that the streets were instantly flooded.

We took shelter and dodged the rain from store to store for 20 minutes or so until it eased up, then made our way back to the apartment. When it eased, the sky grew lighter for a period, but it started growing pitch black when we were still some blocks off from the flat. Just as we arrived the heavens opened up again, and it absolutely poured down. I was just glad there wasn't a show tonight! Well there was, but it wasn’t one of Roger’s. Harry was doing a small gig tonight, and it just so happened that it was across the street from our apartment.

We headed over to the venue around 7:45 where we had arranged to meet Marcelo and his fiancé. They had already got a small table about 3 rows back from the stage. We joined them at the table and ordered a bottle of wine.

The intimate venue for tonight's show   Good friends                                       Our view of the stage

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I saw Harry at the bar as I was getting the wine and he said it would be just his band tonight—no Dave, Marky, or Kip.

The show started around 9 P.M., and Harry was on for a good hour playing jazz with his band which included all the guys from the solo show he did the week before. It was a much smaller venue and a lot more intimate. I enjoyed it a lot more, to be honest. He had the same guy on double bass, too, who was very entertaining to watch. Harry’s wife Rochelle and sister India were at the show and seemed to be enjoying it a lot. It was nice to get a wave from both Harry and the double Bass guy at the end of the show.

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We all left the club around 10:30 and had an early night after showing Marcelo our apartment across the street.

Album of pictures from today and Harry’s show

1 comment:

  1. Did you know that according to legend, Dulce de Leche may have been invented by Napoleon’s soldiers burning milk and sugar while in the field, or by a housekeeper who forgot the milk on the stove?
    When I was in the buenos aires apartment I rented in Argentina, I used to eat this for breakfast every day.
    Kim

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