CLIFFS NOTES

What We Did

• Ate steak
• Walked close to 10 miles a day and visited various neighborhoods: Retiro, Recoletta, Palermo, Puerto Madera, San Nicholas
• Ate steak
• Visited modern art museum, the opera house, the president's office building
• Ate steak
• Ate pizza
• Ate steak
• Visited cemetery and La Fleur
• Ate steak

What We Liked Most

• The steak
• Walking around the neighborhoods, seeing the parks,sculptures, and the italian-influenced architecture
• Visits to the cemetery, La Fleur and Teatro Colon
• Tango Dinner Show

Memorable Moments

• Our anniversary dinner was excellent!
• The peace in the cemetery
• Seeing a cambio bust

_____________________________________
THE PLAY-BY-PLAY

Buenos Aires was a bit different from our other stops so far since there was not a specific sight that we were there to see (like Macchu Picchu or Iguazu Falls). We really just wanted a few days in the city to relax, eat some good food, and check out the neighborhoods, so it worked out great because that is exactly what we did! It was very much a walking, walking, walking food tour.

Upon arrival we spent the evening of chilling in the hotel, doing laundry and sorting through photos from the previous destinations. The next morning we walked around for a few hours to explore our area near the hotel and get our bearings. We found a market, a breakfast spot, and started to pick out the things we wanted to see on the following days. We were staying in an interesting area of town - a very bustling area with tons of shopping and restaurants. We were just one block off of Florida street which is known for being a major money-exchange street. Each time we walked down the street we heard a constant chorus of "cambio! cambio? cambio!" - which is an offer to exchange money for Argentine dollars. There were also some street performers, my personal favorite being the breakdance crew. (of course)

Our walk included visits to the big Cathedral near our hotel, and then visited Casa Rosada. The Cathedral was huge and beautiful. Casa Rosada was a quick visit and was surprisingly understated. It was a nice building, but we were surprised at how easy it was to visit and see in just a few minutes. It was a beautiful day so we enjoyed the park area outside of the building and continued walking around for the rest of the afternoon.

The next day we and began by trying to go to a tour of Teatro Colon - the main opera house in Argentina - but there weren't tours available. It was raining out so we decided to just hang out in a coffee shop for a bit and enjoy the 90's music that was playing. It seems that Buenos Aires favors mid-90's music above all other music for restaurants, common areas, coffee shops, stores, etc.

We continued strolling throughout the afternoon to see the Retiro neighborhood. The italian influence was very apparent in the beautiful architecture. We also stopped for some italian-inspired food at Kentucky Pizzeria - which we renamed KFP. The pizza was decent, but made even tastier by the tasty price of $8 for a huge pizza, 2 pieces of chickpea bread and 2 beers! We also scoped out a steakhouse for dinner - dinner for our one year anniversary from our first date! It turned out to be excellent and Charley got his first Argentine steak!

The next day we began with what became our regular stop at Mostazo for coffee and croissants and watched a cambio-bust go down. Many of the cambio offers on Florida street in our neighborhood are black market money exchanges and the guy that got busted had just offered us "cambio? cambio! cambio?" minutes before. We sat inside the restaurant and watched him squirm while being questionned by 4 cops. The cops came into the restaurant and questioned a few of the customers as well. We presume that they were looking for the cambio-guy's "backer" who would have been inside one of the local buildings waiting to do the money exchanges. After our close criminal-encounter ;), we walked over to the Palermo neighborhood to the Malba museum which is the modern art museum. It was a great hour-long walk and the museum was nice - not too overwhelmingly big and not small. We both really enjoyed the photography exhibit by Mario Testino - lots of peculiar photos of musicians and actors.

On the walk back, I took a deep breath and went into a salon to get my hairs cut - my oddball short hair was starting to grow out into a troll-doll look so I wanted to see if they could help. The gal who cut my hair spoke NO english. Zero. She had purple streaks and spikes in her hair though, so I figured that she knew what she was doing. ;) I showed her a few pictures of hair I liked on other people, gestured about how short I wanted my hair (or maybe she thought it was how much I wanted cut off?) and then crossed my fingers. Charley went for a long walk while scissor noises and tiny bits of hair showered around me. The cut turned out decent - my only worry being that it will grow out all weird.

That evening we put on our Sunday best (oh wait, it was the same clothes we've been wearing for a month) and went to a tango dinner show. The food was excellent - and surprise, we had steak and wine!. The tango show was awesome - but the live band was even better.

The next day we ventured out to Recoleta and spent a couple of hours strolling through the amazing cemetary. I had been before and it was just as beautiful as it had been the first time around. The mausoleums and sculptures are very impressive and it is apparent how much has gone into honoring the departed. It was a super peaceful setting right in the heart of Buenos Aires complete with roaming, friendly cats. We continued on our stroll to La Fleur which is the big metal, mechanic flower sculpture in the area. It reminded us of the bean in Chicago - shiny chrome-looking and about that same scale. That evening, we returned to KFP for another round of pizza and beer for less than $10.

We spent our last morning exploring Puerto Madero. It was a nice walk - we encountered some kind of happening on our walk past Casa Rosada - there were a couple of hundred demonstrators and news crews there. We walked over to the water to gra lunch at a place on the water and headed back to Teatro Colon for another attempt at taking the tour. The theater is beautiful and very reflective of the French and Italian architecture styles. For our last evening we had another amazing steak dinner at Al Carbon. Then we were off to the airport for our red-eye flight(s).

All in all Buenos Aires was nice. We really enjoyed all of the walking mileage, the architecture, and the steak. It was a relatively typical big city in many ways, but a nice city to visit nonetheless. We talked about visiting the Patagonia region in the future to do a bit of hiking and if we do that we will likely spend a day or two in BA, but not much more as we saw the main sights we set out to see.

Next stop: Tokyo.