La Boca

La Boca is the southeasternmost Bs. As. neighborhood, surrounded by piers at the mouth of a small river, historically a poorer, immigrant community where 100 years ago stevedores and dockworkers used leftover boat paint to brighten their homes. Today, most of La Boca is "not recommended" for tourists because it's still a working class neighborhood. A small tourist section with the largest concentration of colored buildings is full of street vendors and those painted wooden scenes where you pay to have your photo taken sticking your head through a hole in the scene... not really for me. As soon as I stepped off the bus, which had taken an hour, the thong on my flipflop snapped, forcing me to limp along, dragging my lame flipflop behind me by clenching the thong between my toes as I searched, to no avail, for a shop where I could find a replacement pair and carry on with my sightseeing. After a few minutes of hobbling around, dodging dog piles (which are EVERYWHERE in this city), I gave up and hopped the bus back to Palermo to go find a new pair of havaianas.