So when I stood on deck on my overnight trip from Ancona to Croatia after another incredibly frustrating couple of hours spent trying to make sense of the nonsensical, I felt a bittersweet sense of loss at leaving the country behind, along with it the experiences I'd had there, but also relief in many ways to be moving on - and heading to the next and last part of my journey before returning home.
Even back in 1946, the ‘rules’ for a perfect cup of tea were being debated. The author George Orwell was concerned enough with how to come up with the ideal version of the beverage that he was moved to pen a list of no less than 11 hard and fast rules for brewing up.
I returned to La Milonga for a second attempt at tango in my final week, determined not to let my futile efforts first time round put me off. Several of us from the apartment, along with other friends from school, headed down there to lament our sad lack of tango knowledge and full understanding of what the dance was all about: maybe we were just not melancholy enough to truly take to it in the way an Argentinian can. When we'd drunk a few more beers, the American rock n roll tunes they began to play had more of an effect.
Friday night saw us return to Palermo for a night of more amazing food and Mojitos, followed by another trip to Crobar. The club was even more jampacked than it had been the previous week, but the 80s and 90s electro and dance classics spun throughout the night kept everyone on the dancefloor energised and fired-up enough to stay till the sun came up and beyond.
On my final Sunday in Argentina, I headed down to the beautiful Teatro Colon for the ballet. A historic venue in Buenos Aires, it had been several years in renovation prior to my visit. I'd been looking forward to being inside for an actual performance since my arrival in the city, and I felt really lucky to have been able to get a ticket during my short time there. I'd paid a tiny amount for my ticket, and when I arrived at the theatre I understood why: me and several others were crouched in a tiny space at the top of the venue leaning over a barrier at waist-height. But this hardly mattered at all - the theatre was the most ornate and beautiful I'd ever seen, and when the ballet began I barely even noticed the pain of my legs as I crouched down to get the best view.
After just under a week in Argentina, I left the cosy confines of the Hotel Ritz and headed over to my student accommodation, a short walk away in Congreso. While attending school to learn Spanish here I would be staying in a shared apartment with fellow estudiantes - the place turned out to be crazy and wonderful all rolled into one. It was a large, old and beautiful apartment, with a long balcony which looked out onto the Plaza del Congreso: it was full of huge windows which would remain open throughout the day and night, the strong winds blowing a gale through the common areas. There were many of us students who found ourselves staying in the apartment together while we studied Spanish for this short time in our lives: a range of nationalities, ages, professions, personalities and backgrounds, we came together to hang out and share some wonderful experiences and memories of this great city and country - something which was very special indeed. 
The first day I woke up at the apartment was a Monday, also my first day of school at Coined. The weather had begun to grow more cold and rainy and I remember, late as ever, rushing down the Avenida Rivadavia to the Coined school on Suipàcha in the Microcentro, determined not to be late for my first day of classes. I needn´t have worried - as I walked through the doors of school that morning, I realised it was a laid-back and friendly place where the students were welcomed and very valued. That morning I met my teacher and classmate (both lovely) and began to get to grips with the Spanish language. Lucky to have always naturally taken to words and linguistics of all kinds, I didn´t find it to be a huge struggle to begin understanding this language which I had no prior knowledge of. However, that didn´t mean it wasn´t problematic to adjust occasionally - in particular I found trying to find the words for simple things while talking with classmates and flatmates often tiring, hence why I spent most of this first week with a permanent coffee and nicotine buzz.
I returned to Palermo a couple of days later for a visit to the Jardin Botanico Carlos Thays and Museo Evita. The sun shone really brightly that day, and I enjoyed wandering round the beautiful gardens and spending time at the museum while reflecting on my first couple of weeks in Argentina: I thought a lot about the people I had met and my experience of Spanish thus far, and I looked ahead to my final week in this very special place.
Just a few small weeks after I finally found myself with the necessary freedom to embark on a trip I had coveted for such a long time, and I was in South America.
That night I was able to properly reflect on where I was, and I felt extremely privileged to be in this city for this period of my life. My dorm room was huge and spacious with a vast and high ceiling, and I could step out on the balcony to be met by a fantastic view of the Avenida 9 de Julio in all of its hectic, lively glory. There was lane upon lane upon lane of traffic, contrasting with beautiful, sedate monuments which were dotted up and down the street: I felt overwhelmed by this new place, and could only really compare it to how I felt when I arrived in Tokyo - Japan´s vastly different culture was like nothing I´d ever seen before or since, and I felt this similar sense of ´newness´ about my first experience of Argentina.
My visit to the Cementerio de la Recoleta was perhaps the most moving of all my experiences during the trip. It is difficult for me to describe the scale of it: row
upon row upon row of elaborate tombs, each one entirely individual in its design. It is really more of a minature village than a traditional cemetery, and like nothing I´d ever before seen. The number of floral tributes which adorned the family vault of Eva Peron was something I found particularly overwhelming: it has been over fifty years since her death, and yet people regard her so highly they are still moved to leave fresh flowers at her tomb.
La Boca´s deprivation, alongside La Bombonera, home to their beloved Boca Juniors, put me in mind of how I felt when I first started going to Old Trafford as a teenager: here was an area with pockets of poverty, but its community was brought together by a universal love of a football club, its commerce and graffiti alike devoted entirely to all things Man U.
I suppose at this stage of my Argentina experience, what struck me the most was the level and scale of contrast I had witnessed. There is poverty in so many quarters of Buenos Aires, but still it remains soulful and committed to passion and beauty - I think it is this above all else which caused me to fall for it in no small way.
