It took me less than five minutes to get lost in La Plata.

I took an Uber from the train station, greeted my Airbnb host, made a mental note of the floor and apartment numbers, learned everything there was to know about the three keys opening the doors to the building and studio, wrote down the Wi-Fi code, then I waved her goodbye, knowing I probably forgot to ask about some crucial piece of information I’d need later.

Oh well, there’s always WhatsApp.

And I really needed to pee, anyway.

Once this was done, I realized I would need some coffee to move on with my day—nothing too ambitious after the long train ride from Buenos Aires, just buying groceries and water, finding the city centre and wandering around. We went to La Plata in 2015 but I don’t remember the city much. I just know I found it relaxing, even with three-year-old Mark, and this was a good enough reason to come visit again.

I would have made my own coffee (of course, I travel with coffee) but I didn’t have water. Even the tank of the fancy coffee pod machine on the kitchen counter was empty.

No worries, I’ll buy a cup from a kiosco.

I took the elevator down and stepped out of the building. I looked to the left, then to the right, again making a mental note, of the colourful mural at the corner of the street this time. Chinese lanterns and a giant pink rabbit could come in handy both if I couldn’t remember where to turn and if I was craving Chinese food because, surely, this was a Chinese or some kind of Asian-fusion restaurant.

I had no idea which way to go for coffee. I pulled out my phone. Google Maps told me there was a supermarket a few streets to the right. Perfect. Let’s start this way, there had to be a kiosco on the way.

Sure enough, here it was, two blocks further.

The employee was sipping mate outside the shop with a friend.

“Not hot enough for you?” he laughed when I asked for coffee.

I shrugged.

He must have been in his early twenties, yet he was playing the entire Nirvana discography on his phone. Grunge isn’t dead, baby!

At least not in Argentina (and possibly in São Paulo).

I handed him 1,000 pesos, he handed me a cup of excellent coffee. I thanked him and confidently kept on walking to the right, sipping my coffee.

Two minutes later, I was in front of the guy, his friend, and the kiosco, and Kurt Cobain was singing. He was dumb or maybe just happy.

Kurt Cobain. Me as well, I guess.

How did I even end up here again?

Because La Plata.

La Plata is the “city of diagonals”. It was designed as a geometrically perfect grid system crossed by diagonal avenues.

The grid system is your regular, straightforward grid system.

The diagonals create complex, confusing intersections.

Try it. Just turn. You will end up in Ushuaia or maybe in Bolivia but certainly not where you wanted to be. Even Feng got lost in La Plata last time.

“Oh, we get lost all the time too,” a friendly local laughed when I explained I just couldn’t find the museum that should have been this way but in fact was that way.

Even Google Maps was hopelessly confused, the little blue dot jumping all over the place all the time.

I got lost many times. I walked past bakeries I never found again, and I crossed entire neighbourhoods that I could never locate again, as if they had disappeared overnight. I circled around blocks with confidence, convinced I was actually going somewhere. “Was it the 4 and the 54 or the 8 and the 53?” I muttered many times, as if I was trying to find the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

It was surprisingly entertaining in a “enjoy this place, you will never find it again” kind of way.

But at least I was always able to take the right turn to my street, thanks to the giant pink rabbit mural.