  We revisit the localized Wannier state description of the twisted bilayer
graphene, focusing on the chiral limit. We provide a simple method for
constructing such 2D exponentially localized -- yet valley polarized -- Wannier
states, centered on the sites of the honeycomb lattice, paying particular
attention to maintaining all the unobstructed symmetries. This includes the
unitary particle-hole symmetry, and the combination of $C_2\mathcal{T}$ and the
chiral particle-hole symmetry. The $C_2\mathcal{T}$ symmetry alone remains
topologically obstructed and is not represented in a simple site-to-site
fashion. We also analyze the gap and the dispersion of single particle and
single hole excitations above a strong coupling ground state at integer
fillings, which we find to be dominated by the on-site and the nearest neighbor
terms of a triangular lattice hopping model, with a minimum at the center of
the moire Brillouin zone. Finally, we use the insight gained from this real
space description to understand the dependence of the gap and the effective
mass on the range of the screened Coulomb interaction.
