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Day 43 – 02/20/2007 – Buenos Aires

We got up and spent a frustrating morning online, trying to find another hotel room. Lou suggested that we give up the search. If we found a new hotel cruising around town, we’d pop in and ask about availability. We were growing attached to the Art Hotel; we just needed to step into the hallway to change our minds or our clothes (which is a great way to meet the neighbors).

Our first full day in Buenos Aires officially started by walking towards the Palermo neighborhood, which was about a 30-minute stroll from our hotel. Our first stop was the Botanical Gardens, which consisted of lovely paths, plentiful benches and incredible greenery. We had heard that Buenos Aires was full of beautiful parks, and it was true.

Our walked continued on to the Zoological Gardens, or as we’d say, The Zoo. You’d think after being on Safari, “The Zoo” would be a little mundane. But no, we loved it. We felt just a little bit superior as we identified all the animals in the “Africa” exhibits before reading placards.

After tearing Julee away from the animals, we grabbed lunch at a nearby café. It was there were learned the difference between raw “crudo” ham on a sandwich and cured “cerrano” ham on a sandwich.

 We then walked on to the Evita Museum, which opened on July 25, 2002. The museum is a converted mansion where The Eva Peron Foundation once housed single mothers with children. The guidebook reported that the museum treats her history fairly, looking at both the good and the bad. However, the stories told are definitely skewed towards her public works and speeches of self-sacrifice. The exhibits and commentary only allude to the “bad” and never articulate the accusations against her. That aside, it was a great museum and we did learn quite a bit about the progressive social programs she started including:

• Securing women’s suffrage in Argentina
• Creating safe homes for single mothers
• Founding schools for orphaned children
• Establishing senior citizen care and communities
• Passing the Workers Bill of Rights

The museum also displayed some of her amazing clothes that the military (despite the coup) had preserved.

That night we went to Cabaña Las Lilas in Puerto Madero on the riverfront. It was a fantastic parilla (steak house). Julee got the tenderloin and Lou the baby beef. It was an enormous amount of food, and once again, we were blown away by the bill and how “affordable” even the fanciest of restaurants are for those earning the US dollar.

Day 44 – 02/21/2007 – Buenos Aires

Today was our day to see the touristy side of Buenos Aires. We decided to do a half-day “City Tour” bus tour with a bi-lingual guide.

 Casa Rosada – Our First Stop was Plaza de Mayo square. This is where all the big Argentine political demonstrations occur. It is also where the Casa Rosada (Pink House) is located. Similar to the White House, the Casa Rosado is home of the Executive branch of the government. Although it had some scaffolding on it, it was fun to imagine Evita addressing her throngs of followers while standing on the balcony overlooking this Square.

 

We also stopped for a few minutes to browse the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral before loading back onto the bus. Unfortunately, the Teatro Colon, the famous opera house and a do-not-miss in every travel book, was closed for remodeling.

 The next stop was the La Boca neighborhood, which boasts one of the two famous soccer clubs in Buenos Aires. We stopped at the soccer stadium, which was running a fabulous racket. For 9 pesos, we were able to go into the empty stadium to take photos. Brilliant!

 We traveled further into La Boca to Caminito Street, which is characterized by its brightly colored buildings which were once brothels and are now artists’ studios. Once one of the ghettos of BA, it is now a lively tourist spot during the day and credited with being the birth place of Tango in Argentina. There are couples dressed to the nines that accost you to take pictures for pesos. And then there are the understated couples placed strategically in front of restaurants dancing amazing Tango, the best we saw in BA.

The tour dropped us off dropped at Puerto Madero, just down the street from the restaurant from the night before. We grabbed some lunch and walked along the waterfront until we came across an old Argentine Navy battleship that was converted into a museum. Built in 1897, the ship was well presrved from the bridge to the brig. Julee and I both had a great time peeking into all the officer’s quarters and reading the old charts and mission manifestos. Unfortunately, all the writing was in Spanish, so we amused ourselves with some imaginative translations.

 After the ship, we headed back downtown to Florida St. This is a famous pedestrian shopping avenue of malls, leather shops, music stores, souvenir shops and street performers. Once you walked down the avenue for a couple minutes, you pretty much get the idea of what is available. The highlight of our stroll was a couple that would freeze their position until someone put money into the bucket in front of them.

 

Back at the hotel, the next challenge was to arrange our tango lessons.  Our friend Mara from Chicago had given us a list of several of her favorite teachers in Buenos Aires. We emailed her favorites, and Jose and Viky were the first to respond. Via email, we set up three hours of tango lessons, one hour each day for the next three days.

All fired up about dancing, we wanted to catch a Tango Show that night, so we headed to the famous Café Tortoni. When we got there, all four shows that evening were sold out. (Rookie mistake. We had been advised to make reservations.) The manager took pity on us and found us tickets for the following night and gave us the cross streets to a venue where a Milonga (tango dance party) was happening.

We didn’t have the exact address, so we wandered the streets of the intersection listening for tango music. Silence! We did see a bunch of people milling about in front of the Armenian Cultural center but we figured they were Armenian and gathering for an Amenian event. It wasn’t until we danced in front of a neighborhood cop that he pointed out the milonga was in the basement of the Armenian Cultural Center.

We wouldn’t recommend this event, but they did offer free group lessons (in Spanish). It was so crowded we could barely move and the dance floor quickly turned into a battlefield. So we broke for safety and watched. At 12:30am, a new lesson was beginning and the dancers were still going strong.  We were going to bed.

Day 45 – 02/22/2007 – Buenos Aires

 Julee had read in Frommer’s that there is a tour in English of Recoleta Cemetery on Thursdays. Lou couldn’t imagine why tourists would want to visit a cemetery and much less need a guide to such a depressing place. To our surprise, we were both pretty impressed completely entertained. Rather than grass and headstones, Recoleta was an amazing assortment of elaborate mausoleums in a wide variety of architectural styles. Each row of mausoleums actually resemebled a city block, with structures that resembled banks, churchs, modern homes, and dilapidated fixer-uppers.

 Recoleta is where Argentina’s rich and famous, including Evita herself, are laid to rest. It is exhorbitantly expensive to purchase a mausoleum in this cemetery, as several resting places are “on sale” for 1million US. There are also high maintenance and janitorial fees that must be paid each year to keep these tombs in shape. Many families simply could not afford to keep them and quite a few have fallen into disrepair.

A colony of cats also seem make their home in the cemetery and jot around like the own the place. We were told that some local ladies come to feed them every day. Lou asked the guide if there were any Jewish people buried there, and she said that while there are no religious restrictions, there is a Jewish cemetery on the other side of town.

We both enjoyed seeing all the tombs but we were completely taken with our tour guide. She was probably in her 30’s and was so passionate about her country. A proud “Porteno” (Buenos Aires local), she loved to talk about what made Argentineans such an eccentric people. She would carefully look around to see if any Argentines were around as she whispered stories about dead bodies that would go missing for years and suddenly turn up again in abandoned cars.

She also informed us of a common taxi scam. If you try to pay for your taxi with a large bill, the driver could swap it with a phony and give it back to you claiming you gave him the counterfeit. The cabbies would repeat the process with each customer until they’d swindled you out of 100s of pesos. Luckily we didn’t learn this lesson the hard way, but nonetheless, change your large bills for smaller ones at money exchanges or retail stores.

We had to skip out on the end of the two hour tour to make it to our first tango lesson on time.

Our teachers Jose and Viky, http://www.joseyviky.com.ar/, were adorable. They were very personable and patient and had great senses of humor. They had a very impressive English vocabulary and we could understand them, almost perfectly. The funniest part of the first lesson was when they were describing one of the steps in the basic pattern. Right in the middle of the step, the lead waits or does a “pau-zah”. Every time they said “Pau-zah”, Lou gave me the funniest look. Finally it dawned on me that he wasn’t getting their Spanglish. They were saying “pause” as two syllables and not one. Once we had that straight, we flew through the lesson.

Realizing that we were traveling, Jose and Vicky did their best to find a teaching location close to us. It only took us 30 minutes of walking in circles before we realized they had arranged our first lesson at a gym just 5 minutes from our hotel.

 That night we took in a tango show at the famous Café Tortoni. They had a small theater (sat about 40) in the basement and somehow we managed to get a table in the front. The show was ok. Actually there was a lot more singing and bad acting than Tango dancing but we really enjoyed ourselves. The most impressive act was two gauchos (cowboys) swinging little balls on strings which was great fun to watch.

 

 After the show we went to another Parrilla (Steakhouse) in the San Telmo called La Brigada for dinner. Once again we were amazed at the gigantic cuts of excellent beef and good wine. All veggies look away. That photo is of only half the filet!

Day 46 – 02/23/2007 – Buenos Aires

After breakfast at the hotel, we headed across town for our second tango lesson. This time we rented space in a proper tango school. Again, Jose and Viky wowed us with their teaching and their demos.

 Having had two lessons, Julee had to now get “Tango Shoes”. On our friend Mara’s advice, we headed to Comme Il Faut, a very exclusive shoe specialist. We walked in and Julee just said “6.5 and black please”. Out came 30 boxes of shoes of all different designs for her to try on. It was a very “Pretty Woman” experience. Since the shoes were about 1/3 the price they would be in the States, Julee rationalized that two pairs were defiinitely better than one.

That afternoon, Lou headed back to the hotel to work on the blog and Julee headed out to Palermo Viejo, a hip barrio with lots of cafes and boutiques.

For, dinner we headed out to Piegari, an excellent Italian restaurant across from the Four Seasons. As typical Americans, we tried to order salads, one entrée per person and we were contemplating a side when the waiter said, “No! One risotto. You split. That’s enough”. We loved that he kept us from ordering an obscene amount of food. True to Argentianian portions, one entrée for two was plenty! It was also amazing to see the restaurant booming at Midnight. There were even parties, with kids, waiting for a table.

Being the night was still young, we took a taxi into San Telmo for an “underground milonga”. What’s that? A loft party with tango dancers and music. It was fantastic. It was a lot like a Tuesday night at Julee’s dance studio but it was on a grander scale. We danced a few tangos together and than a teacher found Julee and wouldn’t let her go. She got a few pointers on the floor and we watched some guest performers . We called it quits at 3 AM to grab a few hours sleep before our 10am lesson.

 

Day 47 – 02/24/2007 – Buenos Aires and travel to Mendoza

For tango dancers 10am is considered dawn, but these sweet teachers were awake and cheery for Julee’s private lesson. They focused on womens’ styling and dancing in the unbearably high heels until Lou joined the lesson at 11am. It was hard to say goodbye Jose and Viky, but we hope to bring them to Chicago to teach at Julee’s studio in the near future.

After the tango lessons, we headed back to the hotel to pack up. The only hold up was our laundry. Due at 10am, it finally arrived around 1pm. Fortunately, the hotel staff extended our check out time so that we could pack.

 Having found the perfect empanadas the day before, we headed back to our favorite café for our last lunch in Argentina. With the clock ticking down to departure, we had one more event to cross off the list. We had to get gelato at Persicco.

  Our friend Mara again gave us very specific instructions to obtain the perfect gelato. And WOW, she was right. We both ordered the Dulce De Leche and we were in heaven.

 

 The Argentinans must feel the same as Persicco has there was a fleet of gelato delivery scooters. Just another reason to love Argentina.

At 3pm it was time to head to the airport for our flight to Mendoza. We were excited to head to wine country but sad to leave this amazing city. Buenos dias, Buenos Aires.

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