Tuesday Travels...Buenos Aires

San Pedro Gonzalez Telmo church, Barrio San Telmo

Tuesday Travels

Fabulous images from artist Malika Favre

images courtesy Let's Build a Home on tumblr

Tuesday Travels

Anastasia-Ovcharova on tumblr

Always intense, always excessive;

Viva Napoli!

Tuesday Travels...Maritime Memories

Second Peninsula, Nova Scotia

October, 2004

Tuesday Travels...first illy of the day

queuing for café at CDG,

well before dawn

(October 2009)

Tuesday Travels...Marché Saint-Hyacinthe

A broad fertile plain sweeps from west to east on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River beyond the bedroom communities of Quebec's largest city. Although there are centers of gastronomie scattered throughout the Monteregie region, the indisputable agricultural capital of the Rive Sud is Saint-Hyacinthe, a city of 50,000 that lies approximately 40 kilometers to the southeast of Montreal. Home to one of Canada's premier veterinarian colleges, as well as a huge annual fair focused on all things farmed, Saint-Hyacinthe has long been a commercial centre for the buying and selling of food.

On a recent visit we engaged in a little of that commerce ourselves, stopping by the old market at the heart of downtown to sample the early August bounty. Things were a little quiet mid-afternoon on a Friday, but the selection was terrific and the vendors friendly.

Inside, the building is arranged as one long narrow aisle lined on each side with permanent shops- butchers and charcuteristes, fish mongers, a patisserie, and the usual dry goods and spice purveyors.

Outside, of course, is where the seasonal farmers' market activities take place, and at this time of year the vendors are numerous. We love the building's wide eaves, constructed with beautiful arching rafters, which provide shelter from the elements. Beyond those eaves are awnings with translucent panels, which keep the place from feeling claustrophobic.

The selection of locally farmed food was excellent. We picked up some amazing strawberries, the best tomatoes we've tasted so far this year, and some of the delicious corn that seems to be growing everywhere in the fields surrounding the town.

It's no secret that we love food and travel in equal measure, so it's always a treat for us to discover a thriving local market when we visit a new place. That a small city in the Quebec countryside can support one as charming and vital as this is very satisfying.

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Marché Saint-Hyacinthe

rue des Cascades entre avenue Saint-Simon et avenue Saint-Francois

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Tuesday Travels...apartment 9F ("F" is for "fate")

Isn't it interesting how sometimes plans just don't seem to be working out for you and finally you decide on a change in direction and suddenly everything just falls right into place? It's like Plan A was not meant to be. And Plan B had all along been ordained to be your proper course of action, except that you didn't know it till so much later in the game. For some reason this has happened to us with recent travel plans. We've wanted to "Copenhagenize" ourselves for a couple of years now, but trying to get things organized has been unusually challenging.

image courtesy cntraveller.com

We love to visit cities. And lately we've come to love spending an entire two week vacation in one town. Many people find the idea of devoting an entire vacation to one centre to be a bit much. We, on the other hand, relish having the time to explore a place in-depth, to really get to know a neighbourhood or three, and to try (to the limited extent possible as a short-stay visitor) to inhabit a place somewhat like a local. The key to doing this successfully, in our opinion, is an apartment rental; let's face it, a fortnight in the same hotel room, no matter how luxurious, would probably drive most of us a little crazy. And let's not even mention the cost!

An apartment, on the other hand, gives you freedom: freedom to get up in the morning, prepare a healthy breakfast, and take as long as you want to get yourselves out the door; freedom to make a picnic lunch to throw in your travel bag if you so desire; freedom to explore the city's exotic markets, to actually purchase some of that incredible stuff, bring home the goods, and have an enjoyable time in your kitchen preparing a delicious dinner; and freedom to come home after a day of sightseeing and have something more than a bed and a couple of tatty hotel chairs to relax on before you clean yourselves up and head back out for the evening. To us, an apartment is the key to a truly relaxing vacation.

We've yet to crack the nut that is the Copenhagen apartment rental scene, though. The few flats that have appealed- specifically, in a neighbourhood we want to stay in, of a size and condition that suits our sensibilities, and at a price we can afford- have been beyond our grasp. They either don't seem to exist or they are not available at the times we plan to visit. Perhaps there's a more limited supply of short- term rentals in Copenhagen than other places we've visited, perhaps our travel dates align with when the city is at its busiest (they do have a relatively short window of seasonable weather, after all), or perhaps we just haven't found the right websites (although we're pretty adept at ferreting these places out, we think). Or maybe it just isn't yet meant to be.

Commitments at work recently pushed the dates for this year's vacation into mid October. We were suddenly thrown into the position of having to reevaluate whether it was wise to continue making plans for a holiday in a North Sea environment half way through the autumn. Cool temperatures we could handle, but what if we encountered 14 days of rain? No one wants to risk washing away that precious time. So for the second year in a row we pulled the plug on Denmark. Except this time we said, "there must be some reason that it's proving so hard to get there. Let's respect what the travel gods are telling us."

images courtesy www.copenhagencyclechic.com

It may be some time, if ever, before we understand that reason. But we still intend to visit and we will no doubt try again next year. But in the meantime, in casting around for places that strike our fancy yet remain reasonably dry as winter approaches, we were drawn once again to South America. And, magically, from out of the haze an old friend beckoned: Apartment 9F.

Apartment 9F is one of two modern condominium units owned by two Californian couples in the city of Buenos Aires. It is the first apartment we stayed in during our inaugural trip to Argentina, and it is one of the very best we've ever rented. On our second visit it was not available; we took a place in the same neighbourhood, but our substitute flat was inferior. Unfortunately we pined for 9F throughout the entire stay. So imagine our great delight to see on its website that 9F was available during our intended dates this year. We quickly contacted the owners and within a couple of days it was ours!

Moving onto travel arrangements we found that there were still plenty of seats on our preferred route, an Air Canada service direct from Toronto (with a quick stopover in Santiago de Chile). And best of all, the fares were great! Boom! Booked! 

Remarkably, we had just gone from a period of months, stretching across two vacation years, of trying in vain to organize a holiday to Copenhagen, to abandoning those plans and successfully organizing our entire trip to Buenos Aires all within six days! Sure, we didn't have to go through the usual process of researching dozens of apartments and drawing up a shortlist, contacting the owners and patiently waiting their replies, but still...it makes you wonder why everything fell into place so effortlessly.

B&W image courtesy digifocal.com

Below that, courtesy friendlyplanet.com

Bottom, courtesy planetajoy.com

The lessons, we suppose, are to trust in fate and heed the message when it comes at you loud and clear, and to accept the possibility- even the eventuality- of a Plan B. 

Or should we say Plan 9F?

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 http://www.rentalsbuenosaires.com/

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Happy Birthday to Bobo Feed!!

This past Tuesday was our second birthday- woo-hoo!!!

And as with most mid-week birthdays, it was a low key affair. An excuse, though, to look back a little bit, to reflect on the past year of posts, and to make some plans for the future.

During this past year we started our "friday frequencies" feature. While it was by no means an original idea- in fact many of you regularly post music clips yourselves- it is mostly drawn from our own collection which probably makes it a bit unique. We hope you're enjoying our eclectic selections!

We were also pleased to come across a couple of articles leading up to birthday #2 dealing with topics we'd already covered. 

Toronto Standard featured a piece last month by none other than John Szabo entitled "Bring Your Own Wine Glasses? How the Glass Can Alter Your Enjoyment of Wine". The concept of the glass influencing one's perception of the wine is a dear one to our hearts after having conducted a simplistic test ourselves using new Riedel glasses. We reported on that experience in our post "Cheap Trick: Add $5 to the value of your pizza wine". Are we going to bring our glasses to dinner with us like Madonna did? No. But here at home, we'll always try to choose the right shape for the right wine.

We were also really pleased to read in blogTO in January of the amazing shop Tosho Knife Arts. We've yet to visit this Mirvish Village newcomer, but it is a "must see" for us after having had a fantastic experience with one of the shop's owners, Ivan Fonseca.

 photos courtesy blogTO

Ivan sharpened our knives for us, which we reported on in "The Knife: FYI Part 2" and it was a fantastic experience. In fact we're well overdue to take them in again, and at $5 for a hand sharpening, we really shouldn't be strangers to this place. The only problem might be resisting the urge to pick up another new blade every time we visit!

As for new features, we're planning on introducing Tuesday Travels in the near future, which as the name suggests will focus on places other than here. We certainly have gone down a few roads in our time, and we plan to share some details of those with you. But we also know that many of you have had your own excellent adventures and we hope (indeed we will be prodding and cajoling you) that you'll choose to share some of them with the rest of us. Stay tuned for details on how to participate.

You may have noticed that Google launched its Google+ service last year, and although it is by no means yet an active part of our social networking lives, we felt the need to be present. We sense that over time more and more of us will migrate there, especially those who feel that their personal privacy is compromised on Facebook (although Google's recently announced privacy policy effective this coming March may give some pause). So if any of you have signed up for Google+, we hope you'll add our page to your circles. You can find us here.

Lastly, it wouldn't be a Bobo Feed Public Service Announcement without our requisite call for new followers, would it?! If you haven't already done so, we encourage you to like our page on Facebook- just go to the "Find us on Facebook" box to the right, click on "bobofeed", then like us at the top of the landing page. One bonus of Facebook liking is that we often share links there that don't make it onto the main blog, like this recent one.

OR, if you have a Google account (gmail, etc) you can have Bobo Feed come straight to your inbox by clicking the "Join This Site" button to the right.

As always, we'd like to end by thanking each and every one of you who take the time to read our posts for your loyalty. It's hard to explain the need we feel to share the things we do, but it's really rewarding to know that we find an audience. We would love to hear from you if you have any ideas for subject matter that you think we should cover, and PLEASE comment on the posts- it really makes our day!

Enough about us!! There's a design show to be covered....stay tuned!!