Thanksgiving With Steak

While everyone back home was enjoying turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and cranberries, we headed out to a pretty fancy restaurant in Las Canitas, our favorite barrio. Our Thanksgiving dinner included proveleta (fried provolone cheese), bife de lomo (filet mignon), papas fritas (French fries), grilled vegetables, and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon…all for only 150 pesos (less than 50 bucks)! And it was muy delicioso!

Palermo Soho

Friday we went shopping in the super chic Palermo Soho neighborhood. Basically this area has street after street of high-end clothing and design stores, mixed with bars and cafes. We saw more college students hanging out around there, so it must be the place to go. We plan on going back to eat dinner in one of the fancy parillas (grills) in the neighborhood…hopefully tonight.

Let's Tango

Wednesday night we went to a tango show called La Ventana. We had great seats basically at the front table next to the stage. The tickets included dinner with wine and dessert. The show really was a lot of fun and included not only tango dancing, but also Argentinean folk music and some amazing guy that played drums and performed some form of intense tap dancing while rotating these long sleeves with rocks in them at incredible speeds and yelling “Yaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!.” His act is really indescribable—I wish he were on You Tube (I searched but couldn’t find him). Luckily, we got a picture of him, although you can barely see the rotating sleeves because of the blinding speed at which he spun them.

Puerto Madero

We trekked down to a barrio that’s next to the water called Puerto Madero, which is an up-and-coming neighborhood for people with a lot of money. There are a number of high rises being built and a ton of condos. Along one edge of the port, there are about eight old industrial buildings that were rehabbed into restaurants, offices and residences. They stretch side by side along the entire edge of El Centro. On the water side, there is a long waterfront walk, about 70 restaurants with outdoor seating, and the ubiquitous Santiago Calatrava-designed bridge. This bridge is supposed to have been inspired by two people doing the tango, but we are skeptical, knowing that architects often make up metaphors to sell their ideas. We both agreed that it looks very similar to many of his other designs. Don’t get us wrong, it’s still really cool.

The best part about Puerto Madero was this awesome high-end hotel that was rehabilitated from some old silos. We were a little intimidated going in because we weren’t fooling the staff that we were staying there, not to mention there were BMWs pulling up, guys with huge rolls of cash walking around, and they were setting up for some fashion show. We thought we might catch a glimpse of Giselle or Madonna or someone. We scoped the perimeter, got caught trying to sneak in the residential end and then walked in the hotel side. This place was swank—they even had a picture of Duran Duran, who apparently stayed there. Despite the pretentious attitudes, the building really was well designed.

Rush Hour Commute

So, the mystery that we are trying to solve is: when do people in this city work? It appears that rush hour lasts from approximately 9 o’clock in the morning until 7 at night. We got on the subte today to head to El Centro (downtown) at about 11:30 and it was completely packed. Not only was it really crowded, but the cars don’t have A.C., so it was about 100 degrees. Yet, we looked around and we were the only ones sweating. Why is that? Anyway, we decided to hop off a couple of stops before we got there so we could avoid passing out, thinking that we would get away from the crowd. Well, we got to street level and it looked like the Loop at 5:00 in the afternoon…people and cars everywhere.

Mira Sabine Clark

Here's a little shout out to our new niece. Mira Sabine Clark was born as we were in flight to BA at 4pm on Saturday, November 22nd. We can't wait to meet her!

The Dog Whisperer

Today we checked out the Jardin Botanica and Jardin Zoological, and Parque Las Heras (all of these parks are right by each other) before making our way to the Las Canitas barrio. We felt obligated to spend time in Jardin Botanica because it was designed by Carlos Thays, a famous landscape architect from Buenos Aires. I guess you could say he was the Olmstead of Argentina, although this wasn’t quite Central Park. Anyway, there is a beautiful Art Noveau greenhouse surrounded by formal gardens, which is definitely the highlight of the garden. One thing to note about the parks in B.A.: people use them way more than people in the U.S. Actually, they use them to the point where some, like Parque Las Heras, are very worn looking because they never get a break. These parks act as the social centers for their neighborhoods, as the young, old, and everyone in between use them.

The best sight of the day was witnessing The Dog Whisperer in action. He was a dog walker walking 16 dogs of all shapes and sizes. You should have seen the command he had over these dogs. When one stopped to do their business all of the dogs, without a word from the walker, knew to stop as a pack and wait. While, we didn’t ever see another walker with 16 dogs, we learned this sight wasn't entirely uncommon. As it turns out, Argentineans love dogs as much as Americans.

All in all, we walked 6 miles on Day Two. With two stops for helados (ice cream, but like gelato) along the way, we are set to walk 3 more today!

Dia Numero Uno

We left at noon on Saturday from Chicago. It was 35 degrees. We arrived in Buenos Aires at 9:45 am on Sunday after a marathon 10 hour flight from Dallas/Fort Worth. It was a sunny, refreshing 75 degrees. The airport was chaotic, yet everyone was excited; tourists and visitors bristled with the promise of adventure, while natives were reuniting with families and others just seemed to be there because there was action. Our taxi driver, Daniel, welcomed us to Argentina by displaying his knowledge of the English language and American politics (“You vote? Obama? (big smile) No Bush. No McCain”). He deftly weaved his way through the city, driving with one hand and pointing out landmarks with the other, the whole time providing scattered commentary (“There’s the Palacio del Congresso. Much corruption…Hold on to bag. Crazies will try to take it.”).

Daniel dropped us off at our apartment and decided to forego a nap for a little stroll through our temporary neighborhood. We are staying in La Recoleta, a barrio (neighborhood) with Parisian architecture and a ton of parks. Our first impressions were that it was WAY more crazy than we thought it would be. It really is like being in Midtown Manhattan in our neighborhood, with extremely dense buildings (13 to 15 stories tall, as far as you can see down the street) and a huge mix of shops and businesses practically in every building (so far we haven’t walked through an area that is completely residential). Something to keep in mind: nobody here really speaks English. So, we are very proud of all that we accomplished in our first day: 1) We walked into a busy café (lots of locals so we knew it had to be good) and purchased 2 empanadas de pollo and 2 empanadas de queso y cebolla, 2) went into another café (we probably passed 30 cafes on our initial 2 hour walk) and bought a baguette, and 3) we went to a supermercado and loaded up on wine, cheese, fruit, veggies, breakfast food, and chocolate. Quite the success!

We didn’t have to try very hard to adjust to Argentinean hours (restaurants don’t open until 9pm and close around 3am) since there is a 4-hour time change from Chicago (we are much farther east than you would imagine). Our first night we headed out the door at 11pm to a bar/café called Milion. Milion is in a sprawling mansion with four stories of small rooms each with their own unique feel. We spent some time in the first floor bar before heading upstairs to an art gallery/lounge area and wandered outside for some pics in the garden. We ended the day feeling very pleased with the ease in which we moved through the city and ready to start exploring other neighborhoods.