Anyway, since the weather outside is frightful, I got a boatload of J's photos posted to our Flickr page. They won't all show up in the slideshow on this page, so click on the link below the slideshow to access Flicker, por favor. Gracias!
Friday, February 20, 2009
More pix posted
It's currently raining and thunderstorming in Buenos Aires (putting a bit of a damper...and adding an element of danger...to our original plan of picking up a sandwich and heading to Parque 3 de Febrero). Oh well, I guess we'll have to have lunch at Las Cholas again. Hahahahahahahaha!
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Too darn hot
It has been sweltering in Buenos Aires the last two days (i.e. low 90s and humid). Yesterday, we overdid it a bit, tooling around Recoleta seeing the cemetery and visiting a far-flung list of shops without finding anything worth buying. (We did have a nice lunch at Buller's Pub, which brews its own beer. We enjoyed their Hefeweizen along with a tasty, thin-and-crispy-crusted tomato and garlic pizza and a passable Caesar salad.)
Added bonus: cost us less than 30 cents each to ride.
Today, we bucked up and hopped on the commuter train to the nearby neighborhood of Nunez to visit River Plate stadium to buy futbol jerseys. The stadium is not only home to one of the best futbol teams in Buenos Aires, but is also a major concert venue. Madonna recently played five sold-out concerts here, and U2 filmed "U23D" here.
Still riding on a Las Cholas high, we headed there for lunch today. We shared a choripan (chorizo sausauge sandwich), a tamale and a humita (kind of a cheesy, corn-bready thing wrapped up like a tamale) two bottles of mineral water and a large bottle of Quilmes for $18 total.
Having just discovered the joys of train travel in Buenos Aires (faster and less sweaty), we headed to the main train station in the Retiro neighborhood to ogle the architecture...
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Since the stadium was between two train stations, we chose to walk to the Belgrano station for our trip home. This unexpectedly took us through Buenos Aires' Chinatown, a nice treat. We picked up a parasol and some paper lanterns for next to nothing.
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We hit some of neighborhood shops, stopped at Persicco for ice cream (tiramisu and mousse de chocolate) and espresso, then did the unthinkable...went to the neighborhood mall. In our defense, its air conditioning is better than the ours. So today, we did not hate malls.
Return to the dead zone
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We finally made it to the famous Recoleta cemetary Wednesday. While it was certainly more spectacular, in that it contains more massive statuary and more famous people, such as generals and former presidents, we decided we preferred the lesser-known cemetery in La Chacarita.
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We found similar states of decay among some tombs of Recoleta as we did in La Chacarita. It was shocking that we could just reach out and touch some of the caskets (we didn't, however). La Chacarita had a friendlier feel, with it's wider "avenues" (tree-lined in many cases) and beautiful, garden-like "regular" cemetery area.
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Goin' to the 'burbs
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The experience was pleasant, but not something we would repeat in a future visit. We opted not to take a boat tour of the delta area, which is a big tourist draw. Instead, we roamed the shops, which tended to be heavy on items made in Indonesia. We saw many an item that would be right at home in Pier One or Cost Plus World Market. We did buy a wooden platter, similar to the ones used in almost every parilla restaurant worth it's salt, and three horse shoes.
The most interesting part of the trip was the view out the (unfortunately murky) train windows. We stopped in several suburbs that had lovely houses and cafes. Worth exploring on a future trip, we think.Side note: We were amused (well, sort of) on the return trip by a North American father and young adult son. The father was a self-described "clay-court [tennis] specialist" who obviously also was his son's coach. Their trip was clearly tennis-related, and the father berated his son horribly for most of the trip. I can't repeat some of the names this man called his son. (I was tempted to ask the jerk if he had ever heard of the Menendez brothers, which would have had the side benefit of cluing his oblivious self to the fact that yes, other people on this train do speak English.) We could created a drinking game by tipping a glass every time he said "you have to hit the ball over the net 1,000 percent." Ironically, we've noticed several clay-court tennis matches on TV here. Apparently it's big in these parts.
Shopping mecca
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Then came our first weekend in BsAs, and we finally found what we were looking for. On Saturday, we walked to nearby Palermo Veijo, the oldest and prettiest part of the sprawling Palermo neighborhood. On weekends, a bustling market sets up in and around Plaza Serrano, with artisans selling all manner of handmade items. In addition, several of the bars around the plaza offer up their floor space to small-scale designers...it's easy to become overwhelmed by the racks and racks of cute clothing (mostly for women, but some for men, too). We did some extra wandering around the neighborhood, finding shop after shop that was much more interesting and unique than anything we'd seen in busier commercial districts.
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One of our target items at San Telmo was old seltzer bottles. Of course, the one J zeroed in on was the most expensive, at 215 pesos (about $60 US). It was from the 1920s, it was blue, the glass had a beautiful pattern, and the metal top piece was from the same manufacturer as the rest of the bottle. All those factors make the pesos add up. It was absolutely beautiful, but we instead chose two less expensive ones (one from the 1950s, one from the 1960s, which we got for 100 pesos total.
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We plan to dodge Saturday's forecasted thundershowers to return to Palermo Veijo, and arrange our packing schedule so that we can hit San Telmo before we begin our arduous plane trip back home on Sunday (need we mention that we are NOT looking forward to another 11-hour flight? Oh, well.)
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Third time's a charm
Tonight we ate at our favorite restaurant, Las Cholas, for the third time. This restaurant continues to blow all other restaurants out of the water, for it's combination of good quality, low prices, great service and vibrant atmosphere.
Tonight, we started with a tamale appetizer. It was big but not too big, filled with small chunks of spicy beef, onions, peppers and cilantro.
Then came the main event. We split the bife de Las Cholas, which was at huge sirloin (chorizo) steak served with fries, grilled provolone (OMG! So delicious!), onions and peppers, pureed winter squash and a fried egg (!). Steak was rare and juicy and perfect.
All of that, along with two bottles of sparkling mineral water, a bottle of one of the most expensive bottles of wine on the menu, and two espressos came to a hair shy of $30 US. Crazy, just crazy. It still blows my mind. So does the fact that when we left the restaurant at 10:15 p.m., there was a massive crowd of people standing around waiting for a table. I'm surprised that no one got into a fight over our prime sidewalk table. There are definite benefits to arriving by 8:45!
This one's for McTyre
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Ladies and gentlemen...the Hipodromo is no Emerald Downs.
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Speaking of financial devastation, we took a brief walkabout in the massive casino underneath the Hipodromo. Acres of slot and video poker machines. Makes some Vegas casinos look puny. We didn't play, mostly because we couldn't figure out where to buy the cards to stick in the machines, thanks to our limited Spanish skills. Probably just as well.
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