Sadly the time has flown here. Just when we land on our feet and things become normal and routine (our grocery store, regular dates with friends), the end is in site. It has been tricky finding the balance of a working holiday (is that what we are on?). The weekend still feel like weekends and you kind of want to just sleep in and after a day of work niether of us has planned that trip to Montevideo or looked up a good place to eat on a Friday night.
But we are getting out and seeing things. The city still has a lot to offer, much more than Edmonton on an average saturday. Today we checked out Puerto Madero. We had a lovely meal but then the sun was setting and a potential little walk through the wilderness was a fail. Apparently it not recommended after dark for tourists or for anyone. But we can hop on a bus and try again tomorrow.
Tigre is a town not far from here that has a huge market, lots of baskets and wicker. Wicker is Tim’s favourite. We went on a boat ride through some canals and saw lovely colonial homes and little cabins. The sun was setting (a theme here) and people were eating lunch outside and sitting in patio chairs absorbing the fall sun like cats in sun beams.
Buenos Aires life has treated us well, every day is a pleasure and a challenge each time we leave the apartment. Will I successfuly tell the verdurria guy that I want 3 zucchinis and 5 carrots in Spanish? Can I take the bus to Palermo or a train to san Isdro successfully. There are little wins every time I accomplish one of these things.
Peace from BA! JT
There seems to be an idea circulating out there that while I’m in B.A., I’m on vacation. Not true. In fact, I am working abroad. So, with Monday rolling around, I’ve got to figure out how I’m going to be able to work. Since I’m at work 3 hours before the rest of the office, it’s pretty easy to get started with the pile up of emails. Also, it looks like between the trip down here and my busy weekend, a lot of stuff happened. Overall, it was a busy Monday.
After another busy day on Tuesday, Jodi and I went out for dinner. We walked a bit, caught a subway (called the Subte here) and then walked some more and found a restaurant in Palermo. The pizza was awesome and we feel we’d done well. The only down side was that when we arrived the police were there helping an old gentleman out—it looked like he’d been mugged on the patio of our restaurant. Note to self, don’t leave your wallet, money or bags anywhere near a window or in the open. The old guy was okay.
On Thursday, Jodi had a walking art tour booked. It was of street art in the San Telmo neighborhood. She was gone for the afternoon and came back with some excitement about the art she’d seen and some new friends.
On the tour Jodi heard about an interesting event. In an office just a few blocks from our place was an English story telling night. An English language blog operating here was hosting the event where local English speakers could get together. The theme this month was telling stories. It was fun for the most part but some of the stories needed a bit of work. It was also fun to get out amongst people that understood us.
Our friend Brian was heading back today and he wanted to pick up a few things. Sophia told us about a great market in San Telmo on Sundays. Again Brian came by our place to pick us up and we caught a taxi to San Telmo. It’s a huge market with dozens of vendors filling a big square, creating a sort of flea market and then one street that comes off the square has vendors on both sides for at least 10 blocks. There’s got to be at least 200 vendors. There are all sorts of wares there, from Mate cups to vintage telephones rewired for current use (Brian bought one to take home) to arts and crafts to junk.
We were pretty exhausted from our weekend and while we tried hard to keep up the energy, we were spent. After a lunch on a patio and the shopping, it was pretty tough to do anything else. Sophia drove us around to drop off Brian to pick up his luggage and then to our place to be done for the day.
The Argentinian tradition is to greet people with a kiss on the cheek. Usually the right cheek to right cheek and not a real kiss but more of an air kiss. Also, the country is generally a bit more conservative so it’s normal for men to just shake hands. Not Brian though—he was into this tradition and our parting involved some kissing. All in good fun.
So after recovering only slightly from our big night out, our new friend Brian was ready to go out again. He came by our apartment and we headed out to the Recoleta cemetery for the afternoon. It’s an impressive cemetery with huge family tombs each with lots our decoration. A few had statues and it was fun to think of what we’d look like as a statue when we died. How would we be posed, what would we be holding. Our favorite tomb was the pirate tomb. Scull and crossbones and some very pirate sounding names, arrrr.
There was a little market around the Recoleta that was fun to shop in but after walking around the dead for a while we were ready for beers. It was a nice sunny afternoon after all. Having a beer on a patio in Buenos Aires (by the way, “Aires” sounds more like “eye-rays” around here) is easy—it’s inexpensive and tasty, even if there’s not a lot of variety. I bet I’ve only seen 5 different types of beer here.
After a lazy afternoon, Brian had a request to go for a classic Argentinian steak. He’d seen a restaurant earlier in his trip and we were on our way. Sophia was going to meet us there. When we arrived, it was early but there was a line up. Waiting around was easy because they kept feeding us glasses of champagne. I don’t know how long we waited but we had three glasses each. Sophia arrived and had to wait a but until we were finally seated. The servers were efficient, friendly and spoke enough English to help out the gringos. Brian and I each had a steak. His was good and mine was huge. I mean really big. Tasty too. Mine was the size of a paperback novel, a nice thick one. I couldn’t finish it. As part of our meal, if we ordered a particular wine, they gave us a free bottle of champagne. We had two.
To give you and idea of the costs of things, two steak dinners, two meal salads, two bottles of wine at a nice restaurant came to just over 400 pesos which is about $100 CAD. Not everything is cheap here but food and wine are. Usually you can get a bottle of wine here for cheaper than you’d pay for a glass in Canada.
After a great meal and a lot of wine, 2 bottles between three people since Sophia was taking it easy, we probably should have packed it in. It was after 1 am already and we’d been up until 4 am the night before. So of course we went to Brian’s apartment to take care of the free bottles of champagne and help Brian clean out his fridge from its beer infestation. He had a nice place with a big balcony and we enjoyed the fine evening. 3 am rolled around before we packed it in. Sophia helped Jodi and I get in a cab and we headed home.
A few more. These are a bit more negative but that doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying my stay here.
Some general observations:
So we’re showered and resting up, mostly exhausted from a very long trip when we get an email from Brian asking us to come out. Now if we were back home and we were this tired, this would warrant a very quick negative response. I don’t know if it was excitement of being here or the extra oxygen from being at sea-level but we decided to go out.
Brian is a friend of one of Jodi’s friends and an introduction was arrange for us. We were expecting to connect with him on Saturday so the call to come out on Friday was a bit of a pleasant surprise. We didn’t really know what to expect from him—he didn’t really know us and we didn’t know him. Brian was vacationing in Buenos Aires before having to go back to Calgary to write an exam. This was his last weekend and I think he wanted to pack in the good times.
Brian invited us out with his new friend Sofia, a local whom he’d just recently met through a friend, to an Italian restaurant for some food and then to a club that was putting on a hip-hop show with some friends of Sofia’s performing. Well, who could say no to that.
So we caught a taxi and headed to the restaurant. Turns out not a lot taxi drivers speak any English so that turned out to be more difficult than we’d hoped. After a little fumbling in Spanish and English we managed to get the directions to the driver and he got us there.
When we arrived, we joined Brian and Sofia for their meal. After some quick introductions, we ordered some wine and some food (Sofia’s salmon was great—she shared). Sofia’s English was pretty good and Brian had more of a Spanish vocabulary than Jodi or I so altogether we were able to communicate pretty well. It didn’t take too long and we were all friends.
After the dinner Sofia drove us to the club and got us in. I don’t know if there was a cover we didn’t have to pay or not but we found our way into the bar. We ordered a couple drinks and watched Sofia’s friends. Mostly a good show with a few really good songs. We got to the bar around 1:00 am and left around 3:00 am in a cab. Our cab driver thought he was in the Indy 500 but we were happy to get home quicker.
Exhausted, we were happy to be in our apartment but happier still with how our first night in Buenos Aires was.
So the first update is a big one. We’re on our third day already and so much has happened.
When we arrived the owner of the Apartment had a taxi driver at the doors waiting for us with a sign. While they misspelled Jodi’s name, it was very nice to be taken care of. First impression—hot and humid. Some countries at the exit of the airport there are a lot of taxi drivers or generally people preying on tourists and sometimes they’re pushy and forceful. Not in Buenos Aires—it was very civil and there were a few cops around making sure no one was getting harassed. Overall a very pleasant arrival. Jodi was finally able to take off her wool sweater—I think she won’t need it for 6 months but she’s less convinced. We’ll see.
So we hopped in our taxi and drove about 45 minutes to the apartment where we were met by Mateo, our apartment’s owner. He let us in and gave us a quick overview of the apartment and then asked if we had any questions. We asked a bunch of questions and kept him around for about half an hour. Some he answered, some he told us he’d get back to us.
The apartment is very nice though a bit small but high ceilings and some nice architecture make up for it. We wanted a balcony but instead we got big windows. The place is missing a few things we were expecting. Things like towels, a cutting board and some key utensils are tough to do without. We also don’t have a kettle or a coffee maker—if you know me that is something I’ll fix as soon as possible. Our first morning is going to include Starbucks instant coffee and water boiled in a pot.
So after we were left alone in the apartment, first things first, a shower. Whew, it was really needed.
Well, we’re exhausted but clean in a brand new city—what do we do next?
We’ve only just arrived and things are already hopping. I’m going to try to get to a few posts right away. In the meantime, we’ve arrived, safe and sound.
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