Tourism in list form

I realize I haven't blogged much about touristy stuff in Buenos Aires, so I thought I'd take a break from the meat talk and list my top ten favorite things about the city, because it's an amazing place, and it's so much more than chorizo. Which is high praise from me.

1) Food and wine. Come on, you knew that was coming.

2) The trees. This is sort of a weird thing to love about a city, but Buenos Aires has the most enormous, amazing trees all over the city. I've been to many cities, and never seen anything like them. They are huge, ancient-looking things that look like them belong at the heart of a mysterious forest out of some Arthurian legend. Some have these enormous, gnarled grey roots that rear out of the ground like ghosts, while others have thick, curvy branches that skim the ground and are absolutely perfect for climbing. At one point we were discussing how strange it was to come from a place like Peru, where very old remnants of ancient times are tucked away in corners, to a place like Buenos Aires, where things seem much younger. But of all the old, venerable things to have kept around your city, I think these trees are some of the best.

3) La Casa Rosada. This is the president's house in the middle of the Plaza de Mayo. It is big, beautiful and it's a lovely, dusky pink. When I lived in DC, my friend Pitt and I used to evaluate houses based on how compelling a speech made from their balcony would be, and I have to tell you that this one takes the cake so far. No wonder Evita was able to craft such a compelling and controversial persona--I'm estimating that her charisma was at least 24% balcony.

4) Big Silver Flower. Near the art museum (and just south of some of my favorite trees) there is this enormous silver sculpture of a flower that opens and closes with the sun, and is therefore beyond awesome. Seriously, science+sculpture+ public art? I ran around it every day because it made me so happy.

5) Shopping. When you eat a lot of meat, I guess you get good at doing lovely things with the remaining cow, because the leather goods in Buenos Aires are amazing. In fact, all the shopping is spectacular. Cheap, stylish, and tucked away in lovely neighborhoods like Palermo or Recoleta that are a pleasure just to walk around in.

6) Teatro Colon. This is kind of an honorable mention because I only got to see a tiny bit of it, but Buenos Aires has a spectacular theater. I think I love it more than the Met Opera house. It's currently being renovated, but I will return for an opera there. (interestingly, they also have a club that is modeled after the Sydney Opera House, but I think that setting is probably a little less inspiring when filled with grinding twenty-somethings. just a little, though).

7) San Telmo Street Fair. Buenos Aires has really good street fairs, but my favorite was the San Telmo. It is, depending on your point of view, either the coolest place to get anything you might possibly want, or the biggest warehouse of weird crap ever. I counted four booths devoted exclusively to colorful, old seltzer bottles. There are also random tango shows hiding around corners which are fun to watch.

8) Old Lady Just off the San Telmo Street Fair. I know, weirdest entry yet, but this old woman was sitting on a stool just off the main square in San Telmo with a big poster of Louis Armstrong taped in back of her, drumming crazily, singing and scatting really, really well. She had this huge grin on her face the whole time like this was the best thing in the world that anyone could ever be doing, and I saw her actually turn down money. She is absolutely on my short list of people i want to be when I am old. I just need to learn to scat, sing, and drum, and get 3000% more awesome.

9) 9 de Julio Ave. There is a 20 lane highway in the middle of Buenos Aires. It seems like a poor urban planning decision, but it's so strange that it just sort of turns the corner around unwise and heads straight back to awesome.

10) The details. Random squares of delicately painted tile, brightly colored houses in La Boca, intricately worked wrought iron balconies, beautifully kept parks, smiling restaurant owners, and friendly taxi drivers. It's the small, almost secret-feeling details that make a good city a great city, and Buenos Aires has them in spades. It is all the best parts of Paris and Barcelona, except a third of the cost. I will definitely be back.

Steak? Belt´s too tight for steak.

One of the many, many irritating things about altitude sickness is that it robs you of your appetite. Most of my trip through Peru was at a high elevation, except for a few days in Lima, so the whole time I was in Peru I barely had any appetite at all. I would force-feed myself to keep up my energy, but I was totally uninterested in food. I was also engaging in some strenuous physical activity and not sleeping very well. So by the time I left Peru I was down ten pounds from an already low weight. I was unsettlingly, weakly, bonily thin.

Fortunately, I came to the best eating city I have ever been to in my life. Hark to the legends about meat, wine, empanadas, dulce de leche and everything else they say about Buenos Aires, because I have never been so happily stuffed in my life. First, the steak. It is as buttery, tender and lovely as they all say. I don´t know what they put in those pampas grasses, but I suspect wizardry of some sort. My first bite of steak in a restaurant in Buenos Aires was the Argentinian equivalent of my first glimpse of Machu Picchu--a fantastic revelation of deliciousness.

Steak is the main event, and it was my exclusive focus for the first few days, when I had precious little stomach room and had to triage for tastiness. But as my stomach stretched out a little, I was able to experience even more of the wonders of Buenos Aires. Chorizo? Plump, sizzling, fatty and amazing. They grill/broil a first course of provolone cheese with oil and herbs that is like biting into soft, pillowy, fatty luxury. The store sells ham flavored potato chips whose salty tang has stolen my heart. They also sell huge cardbord tins of dulce de leche, the rich, mild nearly-caramel-but-less-of-an-edge substance that makes everything taste heavenly. Honestly, why are you still reading this? Go to the gym for 3 straight weeks, skinny down, and then head to BA for the gustatory ride of your life. You can afford it, because I don´t think I paid more thank 30 dollars (including some of the best wine you have ever had in your life) for any given meal. And now I have my ten pounds back!

the city of the dead and other stories

Sorry about the long delay in blog entries. As soon as I got to Buenos Aires I moved into an apartment with five good friends, so a lot of my time has been spent doing things that are objectively uninteresting to outsiders like dance contests and massive cheese eating marathons, but are the stuff of which fantastic friend vacations are made. I purposefully divided my vacation into two halves. The first was physically active, extrodinarily memorable, but often exhausting touristy stuff, while the second was a long vacation in a big city with a group of friends, ideal for resting and gaining back some of the weight I shed at altitude. I´m really pleased with how both halves have gone, but the second is much less ideal for blogging than the first.

But we have managed to do some classic touristy things. We´re staying in the Recolleta neighborhood so on the first day I managed to stumble to the famous cemetery there which is just down the block from us. It is strange and striking and not really like any other cemetery I have ever been to. There is no green space. Instead, it is all row upon row of mausoleums, perched next to each other like regular buildings on ordinary city blocks. I am not used to mausoleums I guess--I expected them to be all inaccessible, pyramid-like tomby stone but these are almost like little apartments. Windows, stairs, doors perfectly hung on hinges, like tiny little one bedrooms for people who have no intention of ever exiting. Several of the taller ones that peek out over the walls of the cemetery even have little round windows for better views of the street.There´s something charmingly stubborn and also creepy about a place that refuses to abaondon the strict conventions of living when confronted with death.

We also managed to see a poilitical demonstration against the city bank (seems like par for the course in currency-nervous Argentina) and the weekly march of the mothers of the disappeared. During the dirty war, the Argentinian government routinely kidnapped and killed dissentors. The mothers of people who were kidnapped still gather regularly to march and demand to know what happened to their children. I saw the march just after I had visited the cemetery, and it was such a striking contrast between people who take all the trappings of life with them and physically refuse to disappear, and people who just vanish one day without a trace, so thoroughly that their mothers must spend their remaining days asking for an accounting.

But it´s not all tourism and political strations. In fact, it´s mostly meat, which I will write about next time, because I plan to wax rhapsodic about it for many, many paragraphs.