GET yourself to Argentina and find yourself a real man, " my father said to me, after catching me kissing yet another Mr Wrong.

This was New Year's Eve 2000. I steadfastly ignored his advice - nothing was going to stand in the way of my nookie but it placed the South American country firmly on my map of places to visit.

Buenos Aires, the Paris of the South, while set on the River Plate, turns its back on the water. While there are pockets of 19th century buildings there is very little of the grand boulevards that Hausmann created in the City of Light. Much of the city was rebuilt in the 1960s and '70s. The first glimpse disappointed.

Then I discovered San Thelmo, an area that, along with La Boca, forms the vital organs of the Argentine capital. La Boca gave birth to the tango while San Thelmo used to be the well-to-do area until yellow fever chased the upper classes out. The quarter's beautiful buildings became tenements and the area achieved a certain sense of notoriety. Nowadays it's a tourist hotspot but also double jobs as one of the world's biggest antiques hubs.

'G Historically, BA has a great heritage of furniture making. After both wars it became home to many Italian craftsmen who brought their skills to the city and created an indigenous furniture industry.

Being fair of skin I spent most of my time there scuttling like a vampire from the sun's rays and found succour in the dark recesses of the quarter's furniture forums.

When asking about prices I was horrified to discover that the cost of shipping anything home was going to be more than its asking price. A dealer, half joking, advised me to buy a container of furniture and ship it back to Ireland. He had a point. Not only would the economies of scale improve significantly, but it would sort me out with my next career move.

I had just quit a job and was looking for something new to do. I had also put my house on the market and would have some cash to explore the option. Let's face it - the banks would have laughed in my face if I'd proposed my shopping trip idea to them.

By the time the house sale came through I was five months' pregnant - not the ideal time to go trooping off to South America to explore a whim of a business venture. I wasn't a complete ingénue but I was going to have to get help on the ground to show me round.

Help came in the form of two white knights, Guillermo and Marcello, my men in Buenos Aires. I liked them and had to trust them. I didn't have anything else to go on.

They introduced me to everyone in the business, which allowed me better bargaining opportunities.

In my early 20s I had worked as an assistant buyer in Penney's, so I had some experience of buying large lots and expending vast sums of money - the difference this time was that I was spending my own money.

So like a migrating bird I returned to Buenos Aires. It was only when I was standing outside my apartment door that first morning, struggling with the butterfly-style key system, that it dawned on me that I was perhaps about to make an expensive mistake.

I was so wound up that I vomited my guts up.

I had been reared on a diet of auctions and antique houses by my bargain-hunting mother. This was the '70s and everything old was being discarded in favour of plastics and Formica. Old meant poor and during the brief boom everyone was keen to distance themselves from that heritage. As a result Georgian and Victorian pieces could be picked up for a song. As kids, if we saw a sign for a furniture auction we would go to great lengths to distract my mother from spotting it, because if she did, we knew from experience that we would end up spending the day there.

Back then it just didn't hold the same appeal for me. Subliminally it did something though, because here I was 5,000 miles from home repeating that same behaviour.

San Thelmo's antique shops offer a slice of South American life that is peopled with chancers and charmers in equal numbers.

Dealers come from as far as Shanghai and San Francisco to bargain and buy and try to pull a few fast ones of their own.

Many of the dealers have been utterly spoiled by the former strength of the American dollar and want crazy prices for their showpieces. Others do extensive business passing off reproduction pieces as originals of the species. Knowledge and a sense of theatre are essential. Having a good eye is also important, so too is a poker face and knowing when to fold.

The antique business in San Thelmo is a soap opera. There's the man who operates his business with two of his three wives.

His first and current other halves are united only in their hatred of the second Mrs Castro, yet the three of them sit behind the same desk. Discounts are something they don't do, justifying it with the fact that this is a business that has a lot of alimony to pay.

Everyone knows everyone else's private life. One of the few female dealers is an active attendee at the city's many swinger clubs, which mushroomed after devaluation. This is common knowledge and the men discuss her activities with great relish.

I became a curiosity.

My days were spent scouring shops and filthy warehouses where I clambered up and down piles of furniture in search of 20th-century styles. I knew what I didn't want more than what I did want. Every dark and dank corner of the establishments were explored.

Being pregnant, my mobility was limited and my bladder became very demanding. I had to go to the toilet every half hour. Suffice to say that the facilities in some of these establishments were below par. In some I preferred not to turn the light on. In all I hovered like a zeppelin over the bowl.

Despite my size I climbed up and down ladders to get the best view possible, followed by as many as six men all talking to me in Spanish, all trying to show something else to sell to me. I hadn't a word of Spanish, so bargaining became a series of figures scribbled on sheets of paper.

Prices, despite what you hear about currency exchange rates, are not cheap, but the quality and choice of styles on offer is extensive.

Three weeks later, having exhausted every iota of early enthusiasm I had, I left the men to pack up the container. I bid the long dark winter nights goodbye and returned to the northern hemisphere to wait for my ship to come in - literally and metaphorically.

It remains to be seen whether I blew the easiest money I'll ever make on a wild goose chase. But if, like me, you like to fill your home with personality and are tired of the massproduced interiors styles being sold in many of the nation's biggest outlets, then come see my collection for yourselves.

It includes mid-century and moderniststyle furniture from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, as well as some original art deco sourced on a recent trip to South America.

There are sideboards, bedroom sets, sofas, desks, dining tables and chairs, coffee tables, mirrors, shelving, desks, lighting and objets d'art in glamorous finishes such as lacquer, velvet, nickel, Lucite, opaline glass and chrome to choose from. These original pieces have been sensitively restored to pristine condition by artisan cabinet makers and upholsterers. Prices range from Euro300 up to Euro7,500.

Alanna Gallagher's pop-up furniture shop, is a six-day event, which takes place this week in a shop unit on the corner of Smithfield Plaza and Haymarket, in Dublin 7. Red Luas stop is Smithfield. The shop is open from Tuesday 13 February to Sunday 18 February from 12 noon to 6pm each day. Call Alanna on 086 823 5565 for further information or see www. alannagallagherfurniture. com