It has been less than 12 hours since I left Buenos Aires and I am already ready to get back there! It is such an awesome city and I could definitely see myself spending a longer amount of time there in the future...
We arrived bright and early Friday morning and were greeted with a near death cab ride experience. I guess in BA they have lanes painted on the streets, but no one cares and just drives wherever they want. I was scared and I have driven with my father and been to Roma and driven with my father
in Roma and still thought we could die. Our driver cut across probably six lanes to make a turn and we almost died about 16 times in those ten seconds. But, we arrived safe and sound and in Valentina and my customary fashion, we wasted no time and hit the town right away. We walked and walked and made our way to one of the famous neighborhoods called
La Boca. It is famous for it's brightly decorated buildings and tango shows in the streets. It was a really cool spot. We then walked around the busy downtown area and made our way to Ave. Florida, a famous shopping street. We, of course, being the good tourists that we are, contributed to the Argentine economy and bought some good good local stuff!!! Now our problem is where to put all our amazing purchases (but that's just a sidenote)...
In Argentina, people do not eat until 10pm or later. We, of course, needed to wait until all the locals were going to be eating to head out, so we waited and enjoy a glass of wine at our hotel and took our time. Vale, Elizabeth (friend from Scotland) and I finally headed out and went to a wonderful restaurant called
Siga La Vaca. One of my friends from SD who was born in BA suggested it
and an Argentine man and son we met on our flight over, so we figured it MUST be worth a dinner. This place was packed and it was late! I mean, families, old people, everyone was there to get some grub after 10pm. I loved it!!! Sure enough, we were not disappointed. It's essentially an all-you-can-eat Argentine
parrilla with tons of different types of meat waiting for you to choose it right off the grill! Plus, salad bar, french fries, bread and a bottle of wine per person. As you can probably guess, I ate until I could no longer move and it was just heavenly! Then, we forgot about dessert and I had some crepe-like
panqueques with
dulce de leche (a new obsession) and Valentina had to help me finish them off....
Obnoxiously full, we headed to a bar that my friend from SD suggested because his friend owned it. I had told everyone else in our group about it, so they were all waiting for us there. We had a few drinks and chatted and then headed to another bar close to our hotel. This was all necessary because no one even thinks about going out dancing until 2am. So, we were patiently waiting! Valentina's friend from Italia, Alessio, is in BA learning the tango so he can go back to Firenze and teach it there. So, we met him at the bar and he ended up taking us to this awesome local hot spot to tango at 330am. The spot appeared to be a local community center or theatre and at night, the basement turns into this underground haven for tango dancers. I was just mesmorized by the beauty of the dance and the energy between the couples. I could've watched them all night! We also watched two folklore dances, one was called
la chacarera and the other I'm not sure of the name, but the dancers waved napkins in the air (they are really supposed to use their shirts, but this was a family place...). I was in love with
la chacarera. It was such a cool dance. I want to watch it/do it everyday now!
We got home pretty late that night, so we slept in Saturday and then hit the streets! We went out to
Recoleta, but had to be back at our hotel for a meeting at 6pm. This left us all of about one hour to explore the awesome market and everything around
Recoleta. As we were getting ready to head back, we needed to obtain some
monedas for our bus ride back to our hotel (the bus is 1
peso and it has to be in coin form. Well, little did we know, finding
monedas in Buenos Aires would be like trying to find a goldfish in the Atlantic ocean. And no, I am
not exaggerating. We went to probably 30 vendors, restaurants, stores, bars, etc etc asking for change or just ONE peso. Long story short, we never found one and ended up pleading our case to the driver and he let two American girls ride the bus for free that day! We headed back to our hotel and officially met our new tour guide, Carlos.
Carlos is from Sao Paolo, Brazil, but currently lives in Parati. He is going to be amazing, we can already tell...he is excited to take us into Brazil and is extremely fun! That night we went on a walk and then headed to
La Estancia for dinner at 1030pm. It was recommended by my dad's friend and Vale and I are all about the recommended spots... and of course, we were not disappointed. I think I have eaten more steak here than I ever have in my whole life (and that says A LOT since steak is def my fav food). Vale and I both got
bife de chorizo, medium rare, and we shared
papas frittas and an
ensalada mixta. We each got a mini bottle of wine as well, I got red and she got white (she doesn't like red) and our meal was just delectable. The restuarant is set up so that you can watch the cooks cutting and cooking all the meat from the windows. I'll definitely post some pics as soon as I can. We had some more
panqueques for dessert and then headed back to our hotel. Everyone was at the bar we went to the night before, so we headed there to meet up with them. There were about 8 of us, chatting and having some drinks and then we decided we needed to DANCE! Finally!!!! A girl on our group had been living in BA for 6 months and suggested we try The Roxy because it was ¨famous¨. It was definitely not somewhere I would choose to ever go to again, but it was really fun because there were a lot of us and we all were dancing to the cheesey pop and old songs. We ended up staying there until it closed at 730am, talking to locals and other visitors. We watched the sunrise behind the club and still did not head home...it was awesome! We made it home to get some breakfast and then went upstairs for what could only be called a nap.
Sunday we woke up around 1pm and headed straight out the door! We walked around the Congress building down to the
Recoleta again since we didn't get enough time there. We went to the famous cemetary there, saw Evita's tomb amoung others, and then continued our walk. There is this awesome fountain/light/sculpture in the middle of a park there and it's of a tulip. I am obsessed with it. During the day, it's open to the sun and then at night, it closes and is lit up red. I just loved it! We then headed to
San Telmo for a recommended market on Sundays.
Now, we had been walking all day, on little sleep from the night before, and of course, my bum thigh kicked in and started to bother me. When we finally reached what we thought was the famous
mercado, I must admit, I was pretty pissed. Half the stalls were already closing and they were literally selling old crap. Luckily, we still wandered around and exited through another door. It was then that we were greeted by a street PACKED full of people and vendors and street performers. There were guys playing the drums and tons of people walking around and visiting, dancing in the streets and painting or making things to sell. It was awesome and definitely worth the walk! It actually turned out that
San Telmo was super close to our hotel, so we headed back after exploring the scene.
That night I went out with a Buenos Aires local for some drinks and a mini city tour. We hit up another recommended neighborhood,
Las Cañitas, for a mojito! I wish I could've spent more time in that neighborhood because there seemed to be a lot of bars and restaurants. We had some very interesting convo about the differences between BA and SF and life in general in Buenos Aires for someone my age.
I'd say Buenos Aires has only two vices: 1. water constantly dripping on you from the air conditioners from 1800 and 2. little kids that do sketchy things. Valentina and I had an encounter one night walking home from dinner on a major
avenida...suddenly we were surrounded by what seemed like 50 7-10 year-olds, but may have really been about 10. Still, they really went for Valentina, but I pushed on out of my way because I had no idea what he trying to pull. They were clearly not exactly private-school-kids and Valentina thought she was going down...luckily, she pushed through the pack and we made it out all right. We later learned from a cab driver that Valentina had before our boat to Uruguay that there are thousands of homeless children in Buenos Aires. Most of them boys, and they form small gangs, known as
ranchadas, and commit petty thefts and do crazy drugs. You can read more about them here:
http://www.edmundriceinternational.org/page26/page27/page27.htmlAfter reading the article, some of our encounters with the children made a lot more sense.
We had a ferry to catch this morning at 9am from
Puerto Madero. We were meeting in our hotel lobby at 645 to leave. Valentina and I planned on staying up the whole night, but I got back at 2am and was waiting for her in the hotel and passed out cold on the bed and she came back and didn't want to wake me up. Around 3 I woke up and we chatted for awhile until both of us passed out. I woke this morning at 645 to Vale shaking me and saying, it's 645, we overslept! Luckily, 645 was early and so we didn't miss much, but we did throw all our things in our bags and head straight down, dirty hair and all....
