San Telmo

This morning we took a taxi to San Telmo. Taxis in Buenos Aires are dirt cheap. Plaza Dorrego, in the heart of San Telmo, is about as far from our B&B as any place in Buenos Aires; the 25 minute taxi ride was $6.

Plaza Dorrego is home to Feria San Telmo every Sunday, a huge, open air antique market. The Plaza was empty this morning except for a few vendors selling assorted junque. We wandered around the Galería Mercado de San Telmo. It's a 100+ year old indoor market. We usually hate such places, but this one wasn't the "two sweatshirts for $5" variety. There were antique cameras, antique suitcases, beautiful wool scarves, jewelry, fresh pastries, and several butchers. We watched as locals ordered meat and supervised every detail of how it was cut and packaged. We both noticed something interesting at all of the pastry counters-- a crunchy thing. It looked like a large, deep fried flower formed from filo dough. We plunked down two pesoes (about 70 cents) and got one to share. There was a blob of some sort of jam in the middle, but we both agreed it was gilding the lily and tossed that part in the trash.

San Telmo has dozens of antique shops, but it also has a lot of leather shops. There are beautifully made Hermes look-alikes, available in a zoological panoply of different animal hides. Cow hair Kelly? Check. Crocodile Birkin? It's there too. The bags aren't inexpensive, except by comparison to the genuine articles. Then there are the lighting stores. They're everywhere! Do the people of Buenos Aires really buy so many more lamps than the rest of us? We window shopped, but we only went into one store: El Rincon de los Duendes. Our friend Warren has a thing for gnomes, so we left with a couple of souvenirs for him. His wife is going to kill us. We walked around San Telmo for hours, and we loved its funky vibe. Another thing we loved was the dearth of dog droppings. Not only do the dogs seem to walk on leashes in San Telmo, but professional dog walkers, paseaperros, take them out in packs. We saw one man handle a dozen large dogs with Cesar Millan's "dog whisperer" finesse. We stopped at El Hippopotamo, a famous old café across from Parque Lezama. We ordered cappuccinos, and people-watched from our table at the window.


We paid a visit to Casa Bolivar, the San Telmo B&B where we originally planned to stay. It's a beautiful building, and it's representative of the architectural style we saw all over San Telmo. We never found out why Casa Bolivar canceled our reservation, but we learned at TripAdvisor that they canceled a lot of reservations. The buzz is that they, like so many Buenos Aires B&Bs, are unlicensed and were shut down by the city until they comply with licensing requirements.

Not far from the Gnome shop, we spotted El Establo, a restaurant that our friend Margaret highly recommended to us. Margaret told us she visited El Establo three nights in a row for the incredible palmitos and sweetbreads. We made a mental note of its location, and returned at 2PM for lunch. Our table had a nice view of the grill, which was in the middle of the restaurant, just as Margaret had described. We started with the ensalata de la casa, the only salad on the all-Spanish menu with palmitos. Margaret had described it as a dinner plate covered with a triple layer of palmitos - nothing else; no sauce or dressing. Our ensalata was not Margaret's ensalata. Ours had lettuce, tomato, corn, beets, small pickled palmitos, and a giant blob of mayonnaise in the center. Margaret hates mayonnaise. We shrugged and pressed on. The steaks were good, and were served with a very pungent red chimichurri. We ordered a 35 peso Malbec just to see what a $12 restaurant wine could be like. It did its job-- it was tooth-staining and tannic, which was a nice complement to the steaks. It was a nice enough lunch, but it seemed all wrong. It just didn't seem like the kind of place Margaret would visit three nights in a row. On the way out, we took a closer look at the sign. We had lunch at Del Establo; El Establo is halfway across town.

Not to worry. We have eleven more nights in Buenos Aires.

Segunda Noche

This afternoon, we wandered around Palermo. We set out at about 2PM, and dodged doody for four hours as we explored the bustling barrio on foot. At about 4:30, we noticed a lot more activity along the streets, as parents lined up to pick up their kids at school. I had a "small world" moment when I saw a student walk by with the same polka dot backpack that Caroline uses for school! The highlight of our walk was Jardín Botánico Carlos Thays de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires-- the Buenos Aires Botanical Garden. It's winter here and there's not a lot that's blooming, but the giant old oak and eucalyptus trees are beautiful. The garden has hundreds of permanent residents: cats! These aren't feral animals; they're fluffy, healthy pets. Jardín Botánico is an unofficial refuge for unwanted cats. Porteños provide food for the animals, and local vets keep them healthy.

Lorena made a dinner reservation for us at a local wine bar, Diseño Liquido. After our big meal at La Cabrera last night, we needed to temporarily shift gears. We had an '03 Angelica Zapata Cab that we really enjoyed. It was almost black in color and very primary, but not the slightest bit hot or goopy. It was a nice match for Diseño Liquido's mushroom-cabernet risotto.

We're spoiled by the ubiquity of English speakers in Europe. We traveled twice to Amsterdam in the past year and a half, and never spoke more than a couple of words in Dutch. Even in smaller towns in Belgium, we got by with very little French. In Buenos Aires, our (admittedly rudimentary) Spanish skills have been essential. Outside of the hotels, we've found that most Argentines don't speak English any better than we speak Spanish. Fortunately, they're very friendly, and they try their hardest to meet us half-way. It's amazing how well you can communicate without verbs!

Tomorrow, San Telmo.

¡Culo ducha!

We're checked into Casa Palermitano, where our stuff will remain for the rest of our stay. It's so reasonably priced that we decided to keep the room every night, even when we're in Uruguay. This will allow us to travel with nothing but backpacks. No suitcases!

As soon as we got here, I understood why this place is the top rated Buenos Aires B&B on TripAdvisor. It's a gorgeous old house, with high ceilings, polished wood floors, spacious and beautifully tiled bathrooms, comfortable beds, Frida Kahlo prints on the walls, more closet space than I've ever seen in a hotel room, and Lorena, our charming hostess. Every B&B on Earth has a house cat or two; Lorena has a house parrot named Lucas. Lucas is a gorgeous green and gold boy. He wouldn't talk to us, but Lorena reported that he chats with himself occasionally. His primary phrase is "hola, Lucas."

Our baño has a bidet. A bidet! I've never felt fresher.

Primera Noche

After a long and much-needed nap, we set out to find dinner. Our innkeeper, Lucila, advised us that we could go anywhere for an early dinner (which means 8PM in Buenos Aires) on a Tuesday night without a reservation. Anywhere, that is, except La Cabrera. La Cabrera is one of the best parillas in Buenos Aires, and it's a ten minute walk from our hotel.

I was intrigued.

We set out to claim a table at La Cabrera, and learned our first lesson about the streets of Buenos Aires: there's dog doo everywhere. When I was a kid in Brooklyn, back before people walked around with little plastic bags to scoop up canine caca, the grassy areas near trees were major danger zones. In Buenos Aires, everywhere is a danger zone. There are steaming heaps, literally, in the middle of the sidewalk. The corollary to lesson number one is lesson number two: porteños walk their dogs off-leash. Most of the dogs here are extremely well socialized and stay close to their owners, but we saw one rambunctious and enormous young sheepdog barrel through an outdoor café. The diners didn't mind at all; they cooed at the happy fella and egged him on.

I like it here.

We found La Cabrera, and learned lesson number three: it's a dog eat dog city. We were the first customers to arrive at the restaurant without reservations, and simply expected to get seated first. Three very unapologetic couples pushed past us in line and got tables; we got the first spot on the restaurant's waiting list. We sulked for a little, but then we snapped out of it and enjoyed free glasses of Argentine sparkling wine. We had an outside table on the heated patio by 8:45.

The Argentines butcher their cows differently than we do, and the cuts have different names. We planned to try two of the most popular cuts, Lomo and Bife de Chorizo, but when we saw the sizes of the steaks, we decided to share one. We went with the Lomo, which was a mistake. Lomo is tenderloin; it's tender, but even in Argentina, it's relatively mild in flavor. It was an excellent piece of meat, but as Steve remarked, it didn't transport me. We'll go for the bife de chorizo next time, or maybe the ojo de bife. We washed it down with a bold Argentine Malbec

Margaret-the-Penguinlady advised us before we left to try the hearts of palm. I've never liked hearts of palm; the stuff in the cans is kind of gross. Here, they're incredible. They're like little towers of heavy cream with the faintest vegetal flavor. Mild, tender, lush... you can slice them from top to bottom with the dull edge of an old fork. Steve momentarily worried that it was wasteful to slaughter a palm tree for its decadent heart, but then he remembered that palm trees grow like weeds. He ate the rest of our salad without remorse.

Street crime is a problem in Buenos Aires. At La Cabrera, the hostess came by and strapped a female diner's purse to her chair when she left it on the ground. We were concerned enough from what we've read that we planned to take a taxi back to our hotel, but we were so stuffed that we needed the fresh air. A couple of people approached us for money, but we just ignored them. We never felt threatened.

Tomorrow will be our first day to explore the city! We'll start in Palermo, and work our way out from day to day.

La Otra Orilla

Our flight from Santiago took off at sunrise in dense fog. For a few glorious minutes after we reached our cruising altitude, the clouds separated, as if on cue, to show us the snow-capped Andes wrapped in a soft pinkish-purple morning glow. It was beautiful. The clouds returned and swallowed up the entire landscape, and didn't retreat until we were over the flat, delineated Pampas. It looked weirdly like Kansas.

The cab ride from Ezeiza to Buenos Aires took us past some of the poorest neighborhoods I've ever seen. There were houses without windows that looked like remnants of a lost war-- they were literally sagging and cracking. The warm, homey clotheslines outside mean that people live there. I've never seen poverty like that in the United States. 

Buenos Aires proper feels like a typical European city... glorious old row houses, tiny cars, crazy drivers, and a funky mix of lux and grit. Tomorrow we'll check into Casa Palermitano, which will be our home base as we explore Buenos Aires, Tigre, Colonia del Sacramento, and Montevideo. For tonight, we're in the lovely Bamboo Room at La Otra Orilla. 

It's naptime. When we wake up, we'll be ready for some bloody bife de chorizo and a big, tannic Argentine vino tinto.

LAN Flight 601

We're on the plane and ready to go. There's a TV screen (with remote!) for every seat... Even in steerage. It's an "on demand" type system with dozens of movies and TV shows, plus video games and music.

And yes, we will indeed stop in Lima. How is it possible that we didn't know that?

LAX

We're sitting in LAX just waiting to board our LAN Chile flight. We change planes in Santiago de Chile, but we think there's also a stop in Lima, Peru. That would probably be a good thing to know, eh?

Oh! I almost forgot... don't call or text our cell phones unless it's an emergency; the international rates are crazy! We'll check e-mail every day, so that's the best way to keep in touch.

Adios!