Cordoba is a young person's city, a university town with a high rate of graduates and a low median age of citizens. Cordoba, established in 1500-something had a university and a municipal swimming pool 200 years before Lewis & Clark were loading the canoe. And in the beginning it was part of Peru, but then that's another chapter entirely.

Anyway, it's young and fun, but still has lots to offer us older folks. We loved the pedestrian areas and walked them often on our way to Plaza San Martín, the main downtown plaza. Our favorite though was a late afternoon saunter along the little creek that runs through the city. It's leafy and green and calm. They call it La Cañada, the canyon. I like to call it La Cañanita--the little creek that gurgles happily along.

Summer afternoons are scortching and the streets absolutely empty of anything living. Weekends especially are D.E.A.D. It looks like no one's in town. There are NO cars on the wide 5 lane streets; it's completely deserted.

Our first weekend we stepped out of our apt into a ghost town.

Evenings are the best. A cool soft breeze begs you for a stroll and sitting at a sidewalk cafe watching the people go by can take up some supremely lazy hours of the day.

But it's night time that the place comes alive. Jenna, our teenaged Italian housemate, told us about the tango dancers in the plaza Saturday nights. So waaaay past our bedtime we walked the 10 or 12 blocks down to Plaza San Martín to one of the most enchanting scenes we've ever seen down here.

The plaza was set up with loud speakers and a dj----I wondered if he was actually playing 78's cause some of that music sounded like original Carlos Gardel.

At first it was a few older couples--maybe 60's & 70's --okay, some 80's too---but boy could they dance. They glided across the plaza as delicately as swans and looked like they'd been doing it forever. As it got later more and more couples joined them. Young, old, kids, teens---everybody's out there dancing away whether they're very good at it or not.

Some of them could have been instructors--their footwork was so precise and purposeful. I guess all those years of watching Dancing with the Stars was paying off--it was a great pleasure to watch them, and great fun to watch the people watching them, too.

Cordoba, to it's credit, doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. Generally we found it to be worn and well-used, maybe like your favorite pair of loafers--a little broken down but still your favorite. Unlike Palermo in Buenos Aires, it's not modeled after New York's Soho, and even the nicest parts of the city wear a worker's dress. Sprinkled throughout tho, are modern, clean, fun establishments that break the rule and add to the ciy's complexity.

We especially liked the traditional restaurants that looked like they'd been there for 50 years, and the quirky artists' quarter which could be in movies, it's so deliciously unique.

And of course, universities play a huge roll in Cordoba's personality---the students' presence is everywhere.