Decadence in Buenos Aires

So, time to change themes and write about our travels in Argentina. I reserve the right to post a blog or two about our El Salvador experiences as well, I’m still working on at least one dealing with our final day in site. For now though, let move on to the first impressions of Argentina.

Wow! I mean it would be hard to pick a more different place in Latin America! For impressions from driving in on the Airport, we both noticed how clean it was! This is definitely enhanced by having arrived from El Salvador. As much as I love El Salvador and it’s people, the trash there is a constant eyesore. Here, though not spotless, it is very clean. Walking around the city there were trashcans conveniently located pretty much everywhere, and people used them.

Another nice thing was the Jacarandas, or at least I’m almost positive that’s what they are. They are acacia family trees, but with solid purple flowers, all in bloom and very abundant. In fact a description of BA wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the trees. They have a ton of street trees, and it really makes the city a much nicer place to be, more shade, and more alive seeming. We did notice a lack of squirrels though. Not sure if this is because of the high numbers of feral cats in the parks, or because squirrels actually aren’t down here for some reason.

We arrived very early, getting to our hotel around seven in the morning. Of course, no room was available yet, so we had to go out and walk around to kill some time. We walked over to a neighborhood named San Telmo. It is famous for having lots of antiques and a little park that becomes a street market on Sundays complete with Tango dancing expositions! There we found a little café and got two cups of coffee and 6 of what they call media lunas. These are small croissant things coated with sugar glaze in this case, pretty good stuff!

After going back to the room and getting settled in, we went out to do what I’d guess most travelers do on arrival to Argentina, go look for beef! We went to what passed for a non-touristy “parrilla” which means grill or BBQ, but down here it just means a restaurant that specializes in beef, and meat products! We took a seat at a small table and looked over the extensive menu. Not really sure what to do we decided to go safe and order a cut we knew we liked, “bife de chorizo” which it more or less a T-bone steak. We also ordered a salad and some red wine.

The house wine for $2 a half carafe seemed like pretty good swill to me!  The salad was good as well. It came in a common bowl so that we could share it, and it had a little bit of everything, which meant things like potato chunks, beet chunks, and egg. The steak were amazing, really more like ribeye cuts back home, but a bit larger, including more of the sirloin, more impressively, they were about twice as thick as any cut I have had back home! It was a lot of meat! It also came with bread, which would probably seem like nothing special if you came from back home, but coming from El Salvador it was amazing!

So, after that we waddled back to our hotel and let ourselves take a nap. We’d been up most of the night before on the plane, so we needed it. We got back up in the late afternoon and did a couple of tasks. The big one was going a getting our bus ticket to head south. That took a good bite out of our account. Argentina is not cheap! It may not be super expensive but it is easy to spend money here. For now at least we aren’t skimping on the food side of things. That night for dinner we got a “lomito completo” which is a huge steak sandwich with lettuce, tomato, ham and egg on it. Once again we were stuffed with meat!

The next morning we got up and had breakfast at the hotel. Most of the hotels include breakfast as part of your stay. They offered a variety of fruits but most importantly “dulce de leche” to spread on your toast. To me it’s like spreading candy (very good candy) on your toast! It very, very good creamy carmel, and it’s everywhere in the land of sweets down here. We had it in a thing called an “alfajor” which is two cookies with a layer of dulce de leche between them like a cookie sandwich. We also had it to accompany our coffee later in the day as a bit dollop on a tiny cookie, all covered in chocolate! It was great, but terribly rich! The guidebook claims that per capita Argentines consume more sweets than anyone else in the world. Given the whole dulce de leche fixation, I believe it!

The following are some photos from the Sunday Antiques market in San Telmo. Note the antique bolos and stirrups.

This is the bus we left Buenos Aires in. Quite a difference from El Sal buses!