April 17th, 2019
Today Brendan had to work on more school studies for the first part of the day and Taylor was still on a shopping mission. I walked around with Taylor awhile before heading to the neighborhood of San Telmo. I went to the San Telmo market and wandered around that part of town. I got some empanadas (my favorite empanadas have been in Argentina so far) and watched some Tango dancers perform in a plaza. In the afternoon, Brendan and Taylor met me and we walked to La Boca which is known as being a very colorful neighborhood in BA.
After exploring that part of town, we took a taxi back to our hostel to get ready for a night of opera at the famous Teatro Colon. We actually didn’t know if we were going to see an opera or a ballet as both types of performances are held there. On our walking tours the guides had pointed out what an absolutely beautiful opera house Teatro Colon was, and if we got the chance to take a tour or see a show, we could go inside. I looked up tickets and was shocked I could find some for Wednesday night for only $7.60! I thought no matter what the show was it would be worth the ticket price just to be able to go inside the opera house. We also had learned on our tour that last year the opera house received the #1 ranking for the best acoustics in the world! I was quite excited to find such a good deal on tickets and potentially go to my first opera. We got ready for the night and dressed as nice as we could (considering what we have in our backpacks).
On our way to the opera house I had my phone out using it for navigation to the theater. All of the sudden my arm and hand were hit from behind when a bicyclist going about 50mph, hit my hand and stole my phone right out of it! I screamed and stumbled as he knocked my balance off, and I looked up only to see him zooming away in the street. It happened so fast and my phone was gone! I was majorly bummed. I was thankful it wasn’t worse, and he didn’t get wallets or passports but still sad to not have my phone which I use for everything. I had backed up all of my photos through Patagonia but lost all of the ones from Buenos Aires (hence why I don’t have many posted on this section of the blog).
We managed to find the theater just in time as the line outside started moving to walk into the show. I had the tickets in my e-mail on my phone but they guy taking the tickets was nice enough to believe us as I had no way to access the online tickets. He let us through the door and to our surprise we were led down into the basement of the theater. We never even saw the inside of the main theater. I guess sometimes $7 tickets really are too good to be true. We were directed directly down to the basement where there was a square center ‘stage’ where they had the set of the show. There were chairs placed around this square center. In the center, the set was made up of stairs and platforms that were over a pool of water. It was in fact an opera, but I was surprised how little singing there was. Since I had never been to an opera before I don’t really know how to compare it, but the main character just talked in a quivering voice and had a lot of heavy breathing as it was apparent he was very scared. He never actually sang a note once.
There was another girl character who did belt out a few notes occasionally, but it was mostly the orchestra playing eerie music with sound effects. We were in the back row of chairs and there was empty dark space behind us. I think I was extra jumpy and scared after I just had my phone stolen on the street. I kept worrying that someone was going to grab me from behind. I was constantly looking over my shoulder and always noticing the staff quietly walking around behind me. There were three zombie type girl characters that at one point had baby dolls that they viciously tore up with their teeth. For most of the show they were weirdly crawling around the stairs and in the water. Then at the end, they killed and ate up the main guy character who actually never sang and all the water turned to blood water and flowed down the ramps and stairs. Really quite different than anything I would have expected going to Teatro Colon! To this day I don’t know if being placed in the basement was because of our cheap ticket or if it was part of the show to create a more eerie ambiance. Anyway, I was happy that Taylor enjoyed it and said she was entertained, although it was quite weird. It was a pretty good set and impressive they had all the water features, but it was a bit too scary for me. I don’t even watch scary movies, so I was relieved when it was over. I think Brendan thought it was pretty strange, but he didn’t really have too many comments on it. After that, we had planned to go to a fancy steak dinner, but we were not really hungry. We returned to the hostel and called it a night.