For most tourists, no visit to Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina, would be complete without spending time at its neighborhood of La Boca. The popular pedestrian Caminito ("little walkway" or "little path" in Spanish) is well known for tango performance, artist stands and colorful houses. In fact, the pastel colors facing the once abandoned street was not applied until late 1950s by Argentine artist Benito Quinquela Martín that lived nearby.
Life in Argentina was probably nothing comparable to that in the glorious Italian city of Genoa, which was once one of the so-called "Maritime Republics". Had there been a Benito Quinquela Martín earlier, would La Boca's early settlers from Genoa still be as home sick?
The famous song in the Genoese dialect, "Ma se ghe penso" ("But if I think about it" in English), written and composed by Genoese singer Mario Cappello (with Attilio Margutti's help with the music) in 1925, depicts the yearning desire of an Italian emigrant to return "to lay my bones where my grandmother's are":
"But when I think of it, then I see the ocean, I see my mountains and Piazza della Nunziata..."
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