Thursday, July 15, 2010

Last Days in Buenos Aires

On Tuesday, Karla and I arrived in Puerto Iguazú after a 16 hour, overnight bus trip, leaving our month stay in Buenos Aires behind.  Although we're happy to be traveling again, exploring new places, we'll miss Argentina's capital, and we had a great last few days leading up to our Monday departure.  Here's a quick recap of the highlights.


Tuesday 7/6
We visited the Japanese Gardens, which is up near the Botanical Gardens and the Zoo.  A small but pretty place, it's worth an hour visit.

In the evening, we had our first and only tango lesson with a group called Parakultural.  We're not sure how we waited until our last week to go for a tango lesson, but it happened.  We learned the basic step and liked it, and plan to continue learning this dance once we get back to Baltimore.

After our tango lesson, we headed to Bar de Roberto in Almagro, to check it out.  Our friends D & J, who visited Buenos Aires for their honeymoon, liked the place and recommended it to us.  It was a strange and cool little neighborhood bar full of characters, although there were, sadly, no old men singing lost love songs when we were there.

Wednesday 7/7
We headed into the Barrio Norte/Recoleta neighborhood to visit Gran Bar Danzon, a restaurant/night spot recommended by our guidebook.  It was a cool, hip, upstairs bar/restaurant that served some tasty sushi and some decent ceviche.  We also had an order of risotto and, of course, a few drinks, including a quite good martini. On the way back, we gave our left over risotto to a homeless family.

Thursday 7/8
Thursday, we finally stayed awake long enough to head out to a night club (night clubs in Buenos Aires don't routinely get going until after midnight).  We visited the Niceto Club, to their regular Thursday night party called Club 69. It was a crazy dance party with dressed up go-go/carnival dancers/performers that went around instigating the crowd.

Friday 7/9
Finally, one of the great meals of our stay in Buenos Aires!  We participated in a closed-door dinner at Casa SaltShaker.  There were nine guests in total, eight of which turned out to be from the States, and one who was Argentinian.  We ate a five course tasting menu with paired wines, created and prepared by chef Dan Perlman and hosted by Henry Tapia, which was excellent .  Each course with its wine pairing was fabulous, but my favorite was the mollusc soup paired with a glass of Lurton "Vuelà" Sauvignon Blanc.  The conversation and company was also excellent.  I had, in fact, intended to write a whole entry on this experience, but time got away from me... Perhaps I'll circle back to when this dinner has engraved itself more into my memories as a fabulous Friday night in Buenos Aires, and then I'll expound upon it larger than life...

Saturday 7/10
After starting the day by a no-show from the group that was supposed to be giving a bike tour around Buenos Aires, we found our wat to the Costanera Sur Ecological Reserve and rented bicycles on our own.  We peddled around the beautiful park, which grew up on top of a former landfill when volunteer plants and trees from the delta took over, seeing some great views of the Río de la Plata and also of the Puerto Madero skyscrapers in the distance.

Sunday 7/11
The World Cup! We originally planned to go to this Dutch bar in the Las Cañitas neighborhood to see what kind of festivities they were planning during the game, but once we got there, the streets were overflowing with people in Orange.  We ended up at a restaurant down the street (I can't remember the name) where we had lunch (which was the best pizza I've had in Buenos Aires) and watched most of the match as Spain and the Netherlands clashed.  Karla was rooting for Spain, and I was rooting for the Netherlands (mostly because I wanted Paul the prophesizing octopus to be proven wrong), but Spain was triumphant in overtime.

Monday 7/12
And on this day, we took care of some loose ends in Buenos Aires, gave back the apartment, and got on the overnight long-distance bus to Puerto Iguazú.

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