We visited the San Telmo antique market this afternoon.

A couple of years ago, spending an afternoon meandering Christchurch, I promised myself to one day live in a city that actually cared about its own architecture. I had in mind somewhere in Europe, but it turns out that BAires cares (or did at one stage). San Telmo is fabulous - walking there from town, you go though a district full of building erected by the Jesuits in the 18th C. Some are very run down, with plants (trees!) growing through the widening cracks from the inside. Others have been restored, or are in the process. One edificio (the english word building doesn't quite manage to connote these) is covered in convincing scaffolding, which is mildly surprising; elsewhere in BAires, the attitude to scaffolding seems to be that it's an necessary evil, to be applied as sparingly as possible.

The street market was full of tourist wares and attractions; the mandatory tango dancers with the crappiest sound system I've ever heard, the cervecaria with a poker-faced guitarist and two old codgers haranguing the patrons and singing tangos in a sentimental fashion, a wizened crone dressed in a very short skirt and fishnets, who was tottering up and down in some kind of delirium, with the sole apparent purpose of making babies cry.

But there were genuine antique stores and stalls (SS would be beside himself in this place) - full to the brim with deco lamps, sword-sticks, pictures of Evita, fans, old Borges publications, and dust.

You couldn't see the dust, but by the time we were halfway around the outside of the ring of stalls (which became circles of hell for me before we'd finished the inner ring), hayfever had converted me into a sneezing automaton. I felt sorry for A, being pursued relentlessly by a pulse of phlegmy explosions, and after not too much more browsing, absented myself to a cafe just outside the district (abrupt cessation of sneezing achieved, all that remained was to deal with a faceful of snot).

Spanish word for the day: tissue=pañuelo de papel