Here goes the first real hint about "El Castillo" (The Castle) - which is how my friends here have dubbed my apartment...It is located in what we call here a "Pasaje", a block of buildings linking two streets with a private, internal passage way. Pasaje Santa Marina was built between 1902 and 1915 by the eponymous family and is part of the historical patrimonium of the city of Buenos Aires. It now houses over 30 apartments, and word of mouth has it that its owners range from artists over nobility to strange foreigners. Princess Maxima - Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands' wife - is said to own one of the apartments in the Pasaje. Good company???
It gets better! The owner of the apartment, Rosa, is an artist and polo (the sport with the horses) player. She obtained her arts degree in London, and - this part of her story as told by her husband Ovidio made me wonder most about how incredible lifes certain people live - for seven years she used to be the Princess of Burma's personal polo trainer (the princess was only allowed to have female trainers)! Sounds like a good character for a novel if you ask me... She and her husband (in their mid-thirties I would guess) recently moved with their two small kids to a ranch in Uruguay, amids horses (off course), sheep, crops...
Needless to say that the flat features exquisite antique furnishings, and some of Rosa's paintings are on display! The bar in the open plan kitchen and the mural piece are 200 year old wooden pieces which belonged to a gaucho ranch in the interior of the country! Sometimes, the place is rented by film crews who look for typical yesteryear Porteno style backgrounds...I leave you to marvel like me until the 1st of March!
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