More BA for your enjoyment!

Hey all,

It’s been a fairly tame couple of days compared to the first two.  Not nearly as much walking around, but plenty of sites were seen although not as much as we had hoped.

Turns out Monday = museums are closed day.  So while we walked over to see the art museum (and passed a totally cool looking glass museum) we didn’t go into either.  We did end up going into the law school building cause the map we have made it appear to be museum.  While there were people there, it turned out to be students registering for the next semester or quarter…whichever they are on.  We did (or rather Marci did) ask a nice guy where the museum was and he kept saying “I know what you are saying, but I don’t know.”  So we thanked him and headed outside where he caught up to us and asked one more time.  We finally pulled out the map and showed him the thing and he pointed across the street.  Yeah..

Oh, while I am thinking of it, first place in Name that Flag goes to Tam Bui who Googled it for me and then added a link to “Let me Google that for you” on the last blog entry.  Will Kimbro came in a close second with not only the correct country, but also a nice link to Wikipedia that talked about the neatness of the place.  Susan came in a late, but still correct third.  Where, you ask?  Vatican City.  I guess we walked passed where the Pope hangs when he is in BA.  It did look nice.

Since the museums were closed, we wandered back towards Palermo where we had wandered aimlessly a couple of days before.  As I am sure you recall, the friendly front desk folks here furnished fascinating facts on where we should focus our next foray into the area. 

On the way, we passed by the national library and decided to stop in.  There were no books….or at least, there were no stacks.  There were lots of people reading and studying, but we couldn’t figure out where the books came from.  My guess was you asked the people there to get whatever material you needed.  The building was super cool looking and the baffled people working there let us look around, but it was a letdown.

National Library...

We finally reached the area of Palermo that was supposed to be the place to see in that barrio and it was much more active and clean and what not than we had seen before.  Restaurants all over the place and boutique shops for days.  Marci officially drank the “BA is awesome” Kool-Aid at 3:30 PM, Feb. 4^th, 2013 as she darted to and fro, back and forth across the street to go into most if not all of the shops to look around.   She is now in love. 

Rather than follow her around, I found a nice Irish pub and had a local micro-brew and people watched.  740cc’s (because 750cc’s would be too much) of Amber Lager that was awesome. Patagonia…ask for it by name.

740cc's of amber gold.  Patagonia...mmmm good

 Heading back, we realized it was about 3 or so miles back to the hotel.  Both of us had sore feet so we decided to take the subway which would, after doing a transfer, drop us off near the hotel.  Here is the Traveling Tip O’ the Day (GTJTTOTD): The subways run opposite of the traffic above them.  So if you want to go east, go down the subway under the west-bound traffic and vice versa times 3 for the other cardinal directions.  Threw us off for  a bit there.  Oh and the BA subway is NOT air conditioned and was like a sauna.  The initial cool fresh breeze as we worked out way up after the trip was awesome.

Tuesday found us going to Tigre, the delta area where multiple rivers converge to flow into the bay or whatever it is between here and Uruguay.  It’s littered with islands where you can rent cottages and/or stay in a more established resort. 

To get there, we went to the train station and for the paltry sum of 7 Pesos we got a round trip ticket to Tigre.  It’s approx. 5:1 pesos/dollar…officially…I smell another GTJTTOTD!!! 

The economy here in Argentina is so messed up that you can actually get a better rate on the streets.  A local who was on my flight in said don’t even exchange money at the airport, but rather wait for the hotel cause I would get a better rate (7 or 8:1 instead of the official 5:1).  I did exchange some (so I could get a cab to the hotel), but many places accept both Pesos and Dollars (and Brazilian Reals, for that matter) and they will do that better rate.  So if you do come here, maybe exchange for some Pesos, but carry around dollars too because many places accept both.  I imagine there is some way to get pesos via the dollars at the better rate too, but I didn’t really dig into that.

Anyway, the trip to Tigre took about an hour on a train that had barely surviving AC.  It was relatively warm but not too bad.  We took a tour boat (all in Spanish) on a 2 hour cruise through the various rivers/islands.  All the rivers have street signs where they intersect so you could get around pretty good…assuming you know where the heck you want to go.  It was nice to just sit there and enjoy the scenery rather than be walking all over the place. 

Resort on one of the rivers

House on the river in Tigre

After the cruise we walked around the town of Tigre for a bit.  Looks like you could get some awesome furniture there…assuming the shipping back doesn’t kill you.  I bought a little memento of this portion of my trip there and found they do the better dollar rate at that store.  Something that was 72 pesos = $14 (+ 2 pesos) was only $11 and I got 5 pesos change back!  Boom. 

Coming back was the same as going out (hour long train ride) but Marci got in trouble! (think small kid saying that in sing song.)  We were sitting in the seats that face two others and she had her feet up on the opposite seat.  I told her she should probably put them down since it’s sort of rude and she basically gave me a Bronx cheer (to be fair, I guess her seat was slippery and she felt like she was sliding out of it).  Anyway, an employee of the train came by and gave her a “what kind of heathen are you?” look while telling her to put her feet down (I assume that is what he said…no spreken ze).

Speaking of not speaking…I can almost sort of understand a bit based off my 3 years of high school Spanish and more is coming back as we stay here, but man I should have brushed up more before coming down here.  This country has the fewest English speaking residents of any of the places I have been (and Marci says that’s pretty true of all of South America).  I just think it would have led to a different experience if I was able to chat with the locals better.  Next time.

For dinner we went to an Indian place.  It was one of those “too much beef” moments so something different was needed.  It was pretty good…although the Tika Masala was unlike anything I have had in the states.  And their chutneys were a little odd, but good, just the same.

National Opera House....passed it coming back from Indian food

Yesterday (Wednesday for those scoring at home) we went to the museums again and they were open this time!  The national museum was pretty impressive.  Rodins all over the place, a couple of Monets, a few Manets, a van Gough and many many more.  It was pretty warm in there (which seems strange...isn’t that bad for the paintings?) but still a good time.  We went over to what I thought was the glass museum and instead it was showing all the entries (or winners) from the 2012 art school competition.  Modern art…bleh.  Actually, there were probably 7 or 8 things in there I wouldn’t mind having/hanging, but the rest of it was less than impressive.

Flower sculpture thing across the street from the Art Museum...with me being a dork in front of it

Perhaps the most awesome piece in the museum of glass (where they were showing  the 2012 student pieces)  Had a whole section devoted to Lucha Libre!!

The softer side of Lucha Libre.

We hit a steak place last night that was recommended by someone Marci met in Sacramento before the trip.  It was good…really good.  Best steak I have had here.  We went from there to a Milonga which is sort of a neighborhood Tango get together.  There was a band playing there we had seen on Sunday that was pretty good and Marci really really wanted to tango in Argentina (check that box off!)  I was actually planning on dropping her off and finding a bar nearby, but the neighborhood this was in was beyond sketchy and we followed someone else in that was dressed worse than I was so I went in with her. 

I just people watched while they gave a basic class (and Marci got to dance, dance, dance!)  After the class, they started the real dancing and I guess there are different dance crews? (this is all from Marci’s experience in Sac with Salsa).  People were dancing together but mostly within their own group…and there were some incredible dancers.  There were 3 women at our table (I wasn’t complaining) who seemed to be semi-experienced, but still relatively new to Tango.  They took turns sitting in the chair closest to the dance floor (at least two of them did).  So when the first one was asked to dance, when she came back, another one moved up to the “staging area” (aka, that chair by the dance floor) waiting for someone to ask her to dance.  When she did get asked, I turned to the 3^rd one and pointed from her to the ready chair and she and her friend were laughing their butts off.  I don’t think we spoke a word of eithers language (I think they were Italian based off the flow of the words, but it might have just been smoother Spanish) but we were able to share some humor.  Got to love that!

We left the place around 1am and it was only just cranking up (have I mentioned that things go late here?).  Marci was saying she didn’t feel right when we got to the hotel and went to bed.  I followed shortly thereafter only to wake up with some hella-cramps in my stomach this morning.  I thought it was something rolaids would fix, but that was not happening.  Terrible cramping and then the dreaded: diarrhea.  Feel free to sing a couple of verses if you wish.  Let me start you off:

When you're stomachs feeling wavy and you're making anal gravy,
Diarrhea, diarrhea

Yeah, not so good times today so far.  Marci was throwing up too.  I went to the local pharmacy and got some pills that seem to have stopped the cramping, but not the other.  That and juice has been the order of the day.  We think maybe it was the medium rare steaks (that were awesome going down!) last night that are the contributors.  Now you know why there is an asterisk in menus next to meat talking about eating uncooked beef may be a bad idea.  It was last night, anyway.

We fly out to Brazil tomorrow so I hope it’s just a touch of food poisoning and not something worse.  Seems like we are both getting better as the day progresses.  Fingers crossed.

Crap.  Don’t want to end on a down note.  Good times were had in BA although we didn’t get to Uruguay.  We for sure got a pretty good flavor of the place and it’s a pretty cool city.

 Our time, peoples time!

Jim