Buenos Aires - The Paris of South America!

Buenos Aires (or BA for short) is nothing short of awesome.  It was the first stop on our trip, so there were a lot of "firsts" for us, including:

• First stop on our world tour
• First time in a country where English isn't widely spoken (I mean really, every time we've been to Mexico we're at a resort where everyone speaks English)
• First time exploring this big of a city (apparently 8 million people live in the greater BA area)

First off, I want and need to say a HUGE thanks to Scott Craig, Robyn Nazar, Andrea Wells, Dan Duvall and Sarah Deutsch!  You all were beyond helpful and we wouldn't have had near the amount of fun and confidence in our trip if it wasn't for your guidance.

For those that want to skip right to the good stuff, you can find our photos of BA here.

Our Barrio (neighborhood) - Palermo

We stayed in an area of town called Palermo SoHo.  It is the more fun and happening part of town, but also one of the safest parts of town.  While I still was on guard at all times and armed with my tactical pen, we were very safe walking around at any hour of the day.  We did find out that the next block south of us was a film studio, and the adjacent part of town (Palermo Hollywood) is famous for it's TV production.  No wonder there were so many good looking people walking about (ourselves included).

We quickly found out on day 2 that nothing happens in the town (and probably most of the country) between around 2pm until about 8pm.  Restaurants are closed, bars are closed and basically the only thing that is open are Cafes (hallelujah!).  This turned out to be okay as we didn't wake up until about 2pm local time anyway, so the first thing we wanted was a good cup of coffee and a breakfasty/snack kind of meal.

Our evenings often found us in this place Yolo Bar was our local watering hole.  I had mentioned it in the first night post, but this really was a great little spot.  It was on the corner from our delightful AirBnB apartment, and proved to be a great standby.  Gabi, our English speaking server, was there every night, which made it a little easier to be in as there was zero translation problems.

Street Art

Another thing we found was that even though this was a pretty nice part of town, there was a fair amount of graffiti, or more accurately, street art.

 

This is only a limited sample, but you can tell that there was a least a little artistry that went into it.  What was more fascinating was that no one took it down or painted over it, at least in the week we stayed there.  While some may see it as an eyesore (perhaps the 2nd photo in particular), there was certainly a bit of charm and talent to it. Have you ever tried to spray paint a wall? Not easy...*cough*...I mean I haven't either.

Drivers vs Pedestrians

This was a fascinating experience.  While in the lawsuit happy U.S. there are fairly clear lines of demarcation between when you are allowed to cross the street and not, or when a car is allowed to go through a crosswalk or not, none of that existed in BA.  Cars and people lived intertwined and it worked!  There was certainly a fair amount of honking on any given street at any given hour, but we saw no accidents, no people yelling at cars and really only one or two people yelling at us as we were getting acquainted with this crazy system.

The lines that mark the lanes in the streets were also merely a suggestion.  Our drivers constantly would drive taking up 2 lanes and just drive like that for miles.  People would just drive around us.  It was like controlled anarchy.

There were also no yield signs that we saw.  You could be at a four way stop between two one way streets and cars just knew when to go.  Basically just people and cars appearing fully aware of their surroundings and being responsible for their own safety.  People would step within inches of oncoming traffic, wait for a break, then cross the street.  I imagine it's like this in big cities, like NYC or Chicago, but this was serious business to us.  Cars just knew when to go when there were no lights or stop signs. Coming from Seattle where people are notorious for obeying the "walk" signal on a crosswalk, this did not sit well with Andrea. Man up, Dr.!

The refreshing part was that everyone knew the system.  Everyone appeared to take responsibility for themselves.  Old, young, male, female, everyone just seemed to get along just fine.

Food

This place is a meatopia.  They celebrate it like a religion.  While at least on the west coast of the US, people tend to be relatively health conscious and believe in incorporating leafy green vegetables in their diets, we saw almost none of this in BA.  Meat is king, for sure.  You want a side with your meat?  BOOM! Potatoes it is.  We ate at a fancy restaurant called Don Julio in Palermo SoHo, and even our side of grilled veggies with our steak was predominantly potato and sweet potato, accented with a slice or two of zucchini and a tiny red onion.  To further the point, we had a Mexican meal one night at a place that got good reviews and was really close to our AirBnB.  Andrea, being the healthy minded gal that she is, ordered a salad.  That salad, which was one of 3 salad options on a 4 page menu, consisted of watercress, orange slices, avocado and grilled chicken.  Not the most appetizing or tasty (Dr's note - this restaurant sucked. Still craving Mexican food).  I'm glad I got the carnitas de puerco.

For dinner options, in particular, you basically had your choice of meat (sausage, steak, fish, pork, maybe chicken) and some potato option.  While we were never really awake for "breakfast" in the traditional sense, from those I spoke to, it's really nothing more than a "media luna" which is code for croissant, and some form of espresso based beverage.  Where we thrived was around the "Merienda", or late afternoon snack.  

Because we would wake up during the prime siesta time (roughly between 3-8pm), we often found ourselves heading to a cafe to eat as they were the only game in town during that hour.  We found this coffee shop, Full City Coffee.

It turns out that BA is not known for their coffee quality.  While I didn't really have a bad shot of espresso, there certainly were little to no options for a quality cup of American-style drip coffee.  I knew this was coming in our travels, but still crave it, none-the-less.  After a bunch of research, we found Full City.  From what I read, the lady proprietor is the daughter of a Colombian coffee god, so they serve 100% Colombian coffee.  The thing is, these guys do it better than most any coffee shop I've been to.  You could literally pick this place up, drop it in any part of Seattle, and it would thrive.  The food was great (only place we could find some form of fruit as a meal), but the coffee was superb.  Andrea opted for the cold brew, which was smooth and delicious.  I did a cappuccino the first time, then opted for a Chemex preparation of American-style brewed coffee after.  It was DAMN good coffee!

Cooking Class

Continuing my thoughts on food, Andrea and I decided to take on a cooking class on our last night. One of Andrea's goals is to take a cooking class in every country we visit (Dr's note - I do see the irony in this, as I generally avoided cooking while in Seattle). We read a bunch of different options of things to do around town on TripAdvisor and had lots of great recommendations from friends, but as we are working to experience culture on this adventure, we thought that learning how to cook like a local would be fun and valuable.  We were not disappointed.

We signed up for the Empanadas night with the Tierra Negra cooking "school."  I'm not really sure what they call themselves, but basically it is a husband and wife (Manuel y Veronica) who host up to 6 people at a time in their apartment in Palermo Hollywood.  Manuel spent 2.5 yrs in culinary academy, then another 8 years in kitchens around the world, finally settling back in BA where he is from and eventually started going full time with the cooking classes.  Veronica has a background in tourism with a particular focus in the wine areas of Argentina, and as such, she was our sommelier for the evening.

We shared the class with two gals from Olympia, WA (about 1.5 hrs south of Seattle. Small world.) and a couple from 'Straya (Melbourne, Australia to be specific).  It was intimate, fun, lively, and most importantly, delicious.  Manuel not only had a great grasp on English, but gave us a great understanding of how each ingredient interacted with the other and incorporated the science behind each interaction and thing we were doing. We were science geeking out the whole time.

As you can see from the menu, we made a bunch of fun stuff.  2 types of empanadas - beef & caprese (mozzarella, basil and tomato), Flan and he taught us how to make Dulce de Leche.  Dulce de Leche is so damned good.  It's basically a more runny cousin of caramel.

Veronica did a great job of explaining each wine, tasting notes, the terroir of each particular area and why she chose that specific wine to pair with the dish.

All-in-all, it was an excellent evening learning with laughter, great food and great company.

What we didn't do

We chose to only stay for a week in BA, which is clearly not enough time to experience a city and a culture.  While we did some more stuff than I listed above (walked through the beautiful Plazzo Italiano, experienced the Japanese gardens, watched a futbol match at a local pub, etc), there was a bunch of stuff that would be on the "to-do" list for our next trip to BA.  

Tango Show - More than the rest of the toursity things to do in BA, I am a little bummed that we didn't plan enough to make this happen.  Although all of them were particularly expensive, my heart wasn't broken that we didn't go, but it's definitely on the list for our next trip.

Yellow Bus Tour - Apparently this is the best way to get a layout of the city and the culture in an efficient and relatively inexpensive way.  You basically board a big yellow bus, then they hit different stops along the city and give you tidbits about what each barrio is all about.  Seemed really cool, and would definitely sign up for it next time.

Recoleta Cemetery - This is supposed to be a super beautiful cemetery where a lot of Argentina's rich/famous people are buried, including Eva Peron.  We talked to several people that did this and had incredible things to say about it.  Again, on the list for next time.

River Plate Futbol Game - River Plate is one of the four Futbol (soccer) teams in BA and has the largest stadium in Argentina.  The Sunday after we arrived, they played one of their biggest rivals, Boca Juniors, also a BA team.  Apparently you need to have a guide take you to the games, as most of them are sold out and they have some specific rules about what you wear.  Basically, the visiting team's fans are not welcome, nor are their jerseys or colors.  Like any good hooligan story you've heard, people get really tortured at these games and probably will suffer some form of aggression and/or violence if you represent the visiting team.  Either way, it's supposed to be an experience not to miss.  We're going to try to see a game during our trip to Cordoba (2nd largest city in Argentina), but the River v Boca game would have been amazing.  Next time, BA!

Onward!

So that's our BA experience in a nutshell.  Our next stop is a 1.5 hr flight north to Iguazu Falls, which will surely bring great photos and experiences.

Adios,

Adam and The Dr.