Buenos Aires…immersing ourselves!
Hello All! So I totally forgot to post this and haven’t really done really anything regarding this blog since it would not have been particularly interesting – so it’s February 17th and we’ve been here since end of January.
Let’s see — we rented an apartment in the neighborhood of San Telmo which is kind of an older neighborhood that sits next to another barrio called Puerto Maderno which is like the anithesis of old. I mean, we’re talking about a neighborhood with old crumbling buildings sitting across the avenue from modern, huge apartment buildings and businesses. Both areas are really nice…San Telmo is what you always think of when you think of like old Europe with the cobblestone streets and the antique stores and Puerto Maderno has the new cineplex sitting next to a Burger King. Enough said.
Anyway, since we rented an apartment, we decided cooking/grocery shopping was in order. Which we haven’t done since Africa. Because that would require staying in a hostel with a kitchen which really hasn’t happened since we left Africa (well, I guess they had them in Taiwan but it was way too easy to go buy a ramen or some random street food that was dirt cheap). That has been quite the experience. The grocery stores have been, well, of course smaller than America’s monster grocery stores, and with limited selection. Always tons of wines, meat, and pasta – but it’s kind of a crap shoot after that. So when we’ve been bopping around the city we’ve also been bopping into grocery stores and depending on the area (like of course the ritzier areas have more selection of “ex-pat” stuff – like peanut butter and junk like that) the selection is different.
We’re also taking Spanish. Oh geez, that’s been a struggle. We’ve taken over 2 weeks – what they call semi-intensive (2 hrs/day) vs the more popular intensive (4 hrs/day) which is, in our opinion, the way to go. But we’re making progress and John was able to have a fascinating conversation with a taxi driver about car racing. Since it’s high season, the Spanish schools kind of fill up too so we started with one teacher named Yael who is from Argentina to another teacher, Nunia who’s from Spain. John would NOT AGREE, but I actually think it’s kind of good we had to switch teachers because we’re talking like the difference between a prima ballerina and a gogo dancer. Yael talked slow and was able to understand some English (she’d been studying for like 20 years but wasn’t particularly fluent – scary!) and Nunia talks super fast and understands pretty much no English. Anyway, we’ve learned a lot about learning Spanish…we learn VERY DIFFERENTLY! I know, it’s a shock…
Anyway, we’ve done another couple of cool things although Spanish seems to have been taking up like 24 hours a day…we went to a Davis Cup match and we went to a musical. Davis Cup was awesome. We took the subte (subway) to the premetro (light rail) into this kind of sketchy part of town to get to Parque Roca – a tennis arena (or whatever you call those type of things). Then we watched Argentina totally trounce Great Britain. I have to say, watching doubles is a lot more interesting watching in person than on TV. I think it goes way too fast on TV but in person it’s actually followable.
Then we went to a musical entitled El Burdel de Paris. It was essentially a theatre version of the movie, Moulin Rouge…except for the singing (with the exception of the 2 main characters) totally sucked. But it was interesting and entertaining. In true Buenos Aires style it started at like 10:15 pm. Oh, did I mention that whole time thing here?
So they typically drink cafe (coffee) and eat medialunas (croissants with a sweet glaze) in the mornings…then they eat lunch around 1 pm…and then…well, let’s just say we’ve been walking around at night around 10:00 pm ish and there have been people just sitting down to dinner. Clubs don’t really start getting going until 2 am. Oh, and what’s for lunch and dinner? Beef. Steak, sausage, hamburger…okay, slight exaggeration, but it seriously is the menu of choice.
Mostly, we’ve been looking around the city. We went over to the Recoleta Cemetario which is where Evita (you know, that movie where Madonna sings “Don’t cry for me Argentina…”) is buried. It’s one of those old cemetaries with whole family enclosures – quite impressive. They have awesome parks here. And man, do Argentinians know how to bake the skin. There’s always people laying out in the sun. And people actually exercise here. I think I’ve seen more people running in one day here in Buenos Aires then the whole time we were in Asia. And women have noticeable “assets”. And they flaunt it. But, wow, the shoes are very different than in Asia. The shoes were really cute in Asia…here they are sort of cute in an 80’s kind of way. We’re talking color variety – shoe color to match every outfit. No basic black to cover a variety of outfits – nope, if you’re wearing turquoise, you need some turquoise shoes.
So at the end of the month we’re going travelling again…heading south towards Patagonia…we’re getting itchy feet…
Tags: Argentina, buenos aires, RTW Trip
JohnCin
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