Tag: sightseeing

Buenos Aires: Wandering La Boca

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Ok, I promised I’d write a little bit about my second trip to Buenos Aires and wandering La Boca. Here it is. See? I deliver.

Part of why I was excited to go back to BA was that I never got to see the Boca stadium, or La Boca in general.

Boca Juniors play here. They took their colors from the Swedish Flag.

This time I took Kim’s advice (who commented on a prior post) and checked out Caminito in La Boca. I have to say, it was a pretty cool place. And funny. And super obnoxious. Every two feet, someone would approach us and ask us to eat in their cafe, or go to their tango show, or buy something. It got old, real fast.

Ah, Caminito. And Havanna, which is basically the Starbucks of Argentina. And possibly as obnoxious.

However, the highlight was a 20-something dreadlocked rasta who came right up and said, “Hey guys, want to get really f*cking drunk in my awesome restaurant?”  I couldn’t have asked it better myself.

We declined, however. We were on the search for some good knockoff Argentina jerseys and scarves. And trying to take photos of the streets, because, well, they are pretty amazing.

Creepy mannequins are watching you.

 

Other highlights were the fat Argentine man who takes photo ops as Maradona, the famous (?) Maradona graffiti, and the tango dancers in the streets. And the restaurant hustler who kept trying to guess where I was from. When I told him “Texas, USA”, after he guessed Australia, Canada, Russia (?), and then things like Iowa (!) …he replied, “But you are so white!”

Thanks, dude.

 

Te Amo, Mendoza

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It’s about time where I quit my bitching and write a post about what I love about Mendoza. Because it’s seriously a great place. Homesickness seems to tweak my reality at times, and I’m not always as appreciative as I should be that I live in a wine-lover’s paradise and I’m surrounded by the great outdoors.

So here goes:

The wine. Period. I could write essay upon essay about how much I love it, and it still wouldn’t do it justice. Some of my favorite bodegas from right here in Mendoza are O’Fournier (see previous blog post), Pulenta Estate, Doña Silvina, Gimenez-Riili, Sangre de los Andes, Vistalba, Enrique Foster, Mil Vientos, Atamisque, Mauricio Lorca, Azul, Qaramy, Renacer, and Las Perdices.

The Andes. Walking around centro, you don’t see them all too often, but they’re right there, looming to the west of the city. It’s an amazing sight, and I don’t think I’ll ever tire of it. When I’m feeling homesick, going to the park or plaza to see the mountains in the distance is one of the best cures.

The piétonal and Plaza Independencia – there are always street performers and artisans selling hand-made goods lining the plaza and the pedestrianized shopping street known as the piétonal.

Just now, the little man on a bicycle who goes around sharpening people’s knives rode by. How do I know that, without even looking out the window? Because he plays this signature tune on his pan flute as he rides. It’s pretty freakin’ cute.

Did I mention that I live in wine country? And any given weekend, I can go winetasting in any one of the three valleys here (Maipú, Lujan de Cuyo, Tunuyán).

Sometimes I hate her because I can hear it in the early morning and I get grumpy, but there’s a sweet little old lady who lives in my building that sweeps in front of the building every single day, getting all the leaves and dirt off the sidewalk. Every morning. Without fail. And she’s a sweetheart. I just wish I could understand more of what she says.

The little mom and pop vegetable stores (verdulerias) and kioscos, where the ladies on my street know me. Also if you don’t have a peso or five, and they don’t have change, they’ll let you pay them the next time you see them. I’m not sure this would ever happen at home.

Did I mention how cheap the wine is? You can buy an amazing bottle of wine for about $25. A great mid-level bottle can run between 30-70 pesos, which is less than you probably have paid for a crappy Chilean wine in the past month.

Oh, Mendoza. I’m glad we’ll get to hang out a little longer.

Sunset in the Uco Valley

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Sunset over the Andes from our finca in the Valle de Uco

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen skies like this.

Buenos Aires Day 3: The bus tour

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BA is a giant city. A cab from Palermo to San Telmo is about $20 pesos each way. This is fine when there are more than one of you, but if you’re traveling solo, it can get really expensive. Which is why on Day 3, my first full day alone, I decided to play tourist and buy a ticket on the Buenos Aires Bus. For 24 or 48 hours, I could then hop on and off the bus as much as I wanted, and it goes to pretty much every are of the city you’d want to see if you’re visiting, all in less than 3 hours.

Unfortunately for us, there was a Boca Junior game going on in the afternoon, and therefore no tour buses were going to the neighborhood of La Boca. I’m not sure if it’s because it was going to be too crowded, or because it was going to be too dangerous. Either way, I sadly didn’t get to go to La Boca and take photos of the colorful houses and figures on Caminito.

Grabbing the bus from the stop nearest the zoo, we went from there to the last stop which was right by the Casa Rosada. This area was beautiful, and it’s a good thing, too, because we were forced to get off the bus and wait for the next tour to start in 45 minutes or so. At least that’s what I think they were telling us when we were forced to get off. Either way, I capitalized on the opportunity and walked to the square to take photos of the Casa Rosada and surrounding buildings. It was beautiful.

After an hour or so of tooling around, I got on the next bus headed around the route and we cruised through the city on the way to San Telmo.  On Sunday afternoons, San Telmo is full of people buying and selling antiques (or crap, depending on your tastes), as well as hand-made crafts and other things that make good gifts for people back home. There are tango shows on the street and street performers here and there doing everything from playing classical guitar to posing as statues.  I wandered around the San Telmo market on calle Defensa and Plaza Dorrego for a few hours, then made my way back to the bus stop to pick up the rest of the tour.

Seriously, if you’re ever in BA on a Sunday – go to San Telmo!

We passed by buses of Boca fans who were singing and chanting and making rude gestures to just about anyone who would look at them, so I’m pretty happy that although I’m a big soccer fan, that I was NOT going to the game.

We drove through the modern barrio of Puerto Madeiro, which just feels like you’re somewhere in the US, and around the city up to Chinatown and the barrio of Belgrano before we looped around and I got off the bus near my apartment. It was freezing outside at this point (in the late afternoon) and being on an open-top bus was no longer enjoyable.

Pretty forgettable take-out Chinese for dinner, and some American movies on the tv, and I was a happy camper.

Buenos Aires Day 2: Recoleta, Cafe San Juan & San Telmo

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So late nights in Argentina usually mean late mornings. It took us a while to get ourselves up and out of the apartment, and into a cab on the way to Recoleta. Our first order of the day was to head to the cemetery and find Evita’s grave. Except before this, we needed coffee.

We got some coffees (cafe cortados, to be exact) to go from Havanna, (yes that’s 2 n’s ) which does coffees to go, in the strip of cafes and shops across from the cemetary. There’s also a random pair of red phonebooths from England.

Phone Booths in Recoleta, Buenos Aires

The cemetery at Recoleta is seriously one of the most interesting places I’ve been. It really is a small city of mausoleums that seems to go on forever.

Entrance to Recoleta Cemetery

Entrance to Recoleta Cemetery

The mausoleums range from beautiful to ordinary, to downright disturbing. Evita’s grave is somewhat austere compared to the others, specifically that of newspaper baron Paz.

 

 

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Grave of newspaper mogul Paz

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Evita’s Grave

After Recoleta, we headed to San Telmo to do some shopping and get lunch at 3pm at Café San Juan. I’d been told by many people how great it was, so I made sure to make a reservation earlier that morning for our late lunch. Thank goodness we did, because there were people waiting for an open table who didn’t have reservations, and even we had to wait 15 minutes for our table, although we had reserved.

It was 100% worth it. An amazing lunch awaited us: chorizo in red wine and 2 types of crostini/bruschetta for appetizers…

Bruschetta with Brie at Cafe San Juan
Bruschetta at Cafe San Juan

then three entrees between 4 of us: octopus, ribeye, and linguine. They were fantastic. We had no room for dessert, unfortunately, and even had to take a bunch of food home, even though we had 3 entrees between the 4 of us.

Pulpo at Cafe San Juan

After lunch, we shopped the antique markets and street vendors in San Telmo, bustling with activity and full of great deals for haggling enthusiasts.

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It was a Saturday, and so the big market was the next day, but it was still worth a visit no matter what.

Buenos Aires Day 1: Passport business & Palermo SoHo

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Driving through the city from Retiro to Palermo, we passed a bunch of embassies and beautiful outdoor green areas.  I was staying in Palermo near the US Embassy, close to the Avenida de Libertadores and the zoo.

This was fortunate because my first order of business was to get more pages put into my passport at the American embassy. Apparently, there is a law in every country that says a customs/ border agent can deny you entry into a country if you have less than a certain number of pages in your passport blank for stamps. WTF, right? Read an example here: http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-tr-spot9mar09

So, being an American can sometimes have its perks. Like strolling up to the embassy and realizing that the line down the street is for people who are NOT citizens, and the window for citizens has nobody waiting for it. So you bypass the line and go right on in. Score.

After paying my US $82 to get pieces of paper sewn into my passport that I had to pick up a few hours later, my #1 errand in BA was accomplished.

My new friends from Mendoza were arriving around 10pm that night and I knew the next day that we’d be going sight-seeing, so I didn’t do much. There was a great little café down the street where I got a quiche lorraine, salad and some mineral water called Voulez-Vous Café.  It’s on a corner with great outdoor dining. I sat against the wall on a pillow-covered banquette between two patrons working on their laptops. In fact, many people in the café had their laptops. This was strange to me, because I heard how dangerous BA can be at times and that you should be careful where you take your computer. But I guess since it’s a nice neighborhood and the clientele are fairly upper middle-class, porteños are comfortable here letting their guard down and Macbooks out.

After my friends arrived, we set out to the trendy neighborhood of Palermo SoHo in search of food. While we didn’t end up finding the restaurant we were trying to go to (damn you, Google maps and your wrong information!) we ended up eating at Romario‘s for pizza. A chain, it had a brick oven and the pizza was surprisingly good.

When we finished our pizza and beer we headed farther into the neighborhood of Palermo Viejo to Congo at Honduras 5329, an African-themed bar that was seriously cool. The back garden seems to go on forever, and the drinks were tasty.  For my first full day in Buenos Aires, it was a great end to a great day.