Getting with the schedule

From our experience to date the porteno schedule looks like this:  Hit the ground running between 7 and 9am.  Be as productive as possible in those early hours.  Our 8am run is often spent dodging wet tiles, bleary - eyed cab drivers, and far too much Dog ‘kaka’.  At least if you step in it its good luck.  So we are told…

11-2 – Lunch.  This is a huge meal.  Steak, wine, dessert, café, it’s a major event and not to be rushed through.  We’re told some restaurants offer customers a siesta room to help sleep off the red…

2-5 – Siesta.  While BsAs doesn’t experience the same work stoppage we witnessed in the country last month it is certainly a ‘slow-down’.  We’ve arrived at more than enough stores that are closed, as well as a virtual assurance that numerous restaurants will not be open, or at the very least serve you grudgingly.

5-7 -Happy hour. City or country people seem to pour into the streets, whether leaving work or going, meeting friends, or shopping at the numerous sidewalk vendors.  Cafés are filled and the streets are filled with traffic.

9-Late - Dinner and drinks.  After a brief pause the eating and socializing continues in earnest.  Restaurants are rarely open before 8 and take seating until well after mid-night any day of the week.   Walking into a restaurant at 9pm you can be pretty certain the others there are tourists and octogenians hoping for the ‘early bird’ discount.  Grocery stores and shops that are open seem to be surprising busy although we do acknowledge that could be the pre-Christmas lead up. 

Later…  You wouldn’t believe the crowds out at 3am.  Now we equate ‘out’ and ‘3am’ with 'drunk' and 'disorderly' but in BsAs it couldn’t be farther from the truth.  The people are moving through the street with great purpose seemingly on the way to somewhere important.  Often a second 'siesta' takes place after dinner and before clubbing.  Starting your night at the club insures that you'll probably make the sunrise and we have a good chuckle running past a drunken group of revelers during our Sunday morning runs.

  

While you might ask how one keeps that schedule going 7 days while trying to hold down a job, we have no idea.  We spent the first week trying to adhere to it and were wrecked.  Tired in the morning, wide-awake at 2am, and not too productive in class.  Although resistance has been somewhat futile we have found that skipping the siesta in favor of a walk or museum / neighborhood tour followed by café is a much better way to go.  That and a good set of earplugs do the trick.