Buenos Aires - Day 1

So, I've made it to Argentina! Hard to believe that I'm actually in the Southern Hemisphere. Flying is and has always been a very odd concept to me, it's like time travel and you feel like you close your eyes for a second and voila, there you are, 4999 miles away from home (according to Delta I earned 4999 miles). I wonder if this is how dog's feel when their master's leave for the day and return 8 hours later.

I had a pretty uneventful flight down here, taking full advantage of my upgrade and enjoying several glasses of wine. I had ordered a low salt/no salt meal and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. Some grilled veggies and a salad, and of course an ice cream sundae. Business class was full of older couples, most of them needing the aid of a cane to walk up and down the aisles. The couple next to me was on their way to a cruise to Antarctica, I think most of the older folks were. I guess they leave from Buenos Aires and have about 300 people on a ship for a 2 week sail down south. I'll have to add that to the list of things to do some day.

We landed around 7 am and had car service waiting to take me to the Hilton. Right away I felt the heat and it was a welcomed change from snow I left in GA. The city is pretty big, about 4.5 million living within the city limits. I don't feel like I'm in a once bankrupt country, I could be in NY or London or Paris. The first thing I noticed was cell towers EVERY WHERE, most of the apartment buildings have them. I got to the hotel around 9 and wasn't able to checkin to my room. So I took a bath at the fitness center (in the spa area), and sat at the pool in the sun, mapping out my strategy for the day. The hotel is located in Puerto Madero, which is a newly renovated area, like the Docklands in London, right on a little river inlet with bridges crossing it like in Paris or London. Lots of restaurants and shops and prime real estate (taxi driver told me $1300 / sq m). I took off around 11 and starting walking towards San Telmo.

The first place I stopped was Plaza de Mayo, which is home to the Government House. It's open for tours, but they really aren't tours. I went thru the front gates and saw a line of people, so I stood in it. No one spoke English so I had to assume it was the line to get in. About 15 minutes later they let us thru the next set of gates and up a gorgeous marble staircase into the Govt House. That's all I really know. Nothing was in English, there were no "guides" even in Spanish and there were young guys dressed in traditional military garb standing around but they didn't say anything. I took a lot of pictures and I am guessing I was in the house where all the Presidents conduct business. Some rooms were setup for press conferences, there were pictures of past presidents, famous women (of course Eva Peron) and busts of the past presidents. It was a stunningly beautiful building and I'll have to read about it when I get home.

I continued across Plaza de Mayo where some people were protesting something, which is supposedly typical for a Sunday afternoon. The weather was gorgeous, 75, sunny, not a cloud in the sky. I have a nice sunburn to prove it, I didn't even think to put sunscreen on. I was making my way to Plaza Dorrego which has a famous antiques market on Sundays. Well, the entire mile or so walk down Defensa was a street market. There were vendors everywhere and tons of people. You could find anything from souvenirs to fine art and high end antiques. I stopped at a little bakery and had a couple empanadas, my first meal since 5 am and it was so good! I wandered my way down the mile long stretch, filled with a lot of locals and tourists. People had their cameras out, and I felt very safe, since everyone else looked like more of a tourist than me. I got a bunch of great pictures, the architecture reminded me of an Italian town, with cobbled streets and balconies with shutters and little porches. Very quaint and fun, but supposedly not a place to walk at night. I bought some little pressed glass bowls, a couple of handmade sweaters and some oil paintings. I love how I don't know Spanish, the vendors don't speak English but we still managed to strike up a deal, and the sweater and painting ladies both kissed me on the cheek happy to see their work head off to the states.

I made my way back to the hotel about 4 hours later and rested before dinner at the pool. I headed out to my underground restaurant (okay, it's really a closed door restaurant but I like the way underground sounds better) and was a bit nervous about finding the place. All I had was an address to someone's house and no clue how else to find it. There is no name on the door, it's like an apt in NYC where you have to buzz the apt and they let you in. When I arrived, there were 3 other people standing outside "Casa SaltShaker", a young, cute guy with two older people, I'm assuming were his parents. The young guy had buzzed the apt and was speaking in Spanish so I waited and finally asked if they were waiting for Dan and he replied in American English yes. We were let in and made our way to Dan's apt. Dan is a writer/chef originally from NYC who moved to Buenos Aires about 4 years ago to be with his boyfriend. He opens his house 3 nights a week and serves about 12 people dinner at a big communal table. He conjures up menus from his experiences (a few weeks ago it was inspired by the anniversary of the Beatles breakup). Today was a Chilean theme from his recent visit there. His place was small but very quaint, two main rooms and a tiny, tiny kitchen. There was a little courtyard open to the living room and another one by the kitchen and a little loft upstairs. Very airy and comfortable. There were two tables setup, one seating 6, the other 8. The guests all mingled and I met a couple from Washington State (the two with their son), New Orleans, Toronto, a lady from the Vineyard and some others. We started off with a welcome cocktail, the national drink of Chile, white wine with melted pineapple sorbet. We took our seats and the courses started. I saw at the bigger table next to Charlie (young guy with his parents) and a lady from Toronto. Turns out Charlie lives in NYC and runs a jazz club/restaurant in the West Village (www.garagejazz.com). He was traveling throughout South America for 7 weeks and his parents came down for 2 to meet him. His next stop was Bogota, for the second time to catch up with his boyfriend (of course! I should have known when he said he spent his summers on Fire Island). Everyone was super nice and the conversation just flowed. I sat across from a couple from New Orleans and the husband thought he was being quiet and leaned over to his wife and said "Is Sacha jewish?" and I responded, yes, I didn't know if it was my nose that gave it away, but he said he thought so, since it's a Russian name. Ruth next to me and her husband were also Jewish, they were here for a few weeks in Spanish school. The bonding began! So we ate, we drank good wine that Dan paired with each meal and 2.5 hours later I felt like I just finished a meal with family. Such a great idea and nice way to really feel comfortable in the city. We all exchanged email addressed and Ruth's husband, Michael had been taking notes all night and said he would email them. Charlie sent me an email this morning with a list of places to see, where to shop and eat and I told him I'd send him the name of places in the Hudson Valley. What a great way to start my trip! I'll post pictures of the courses at some point.

I got back to the hotel around 1 am, where some famous band (no idea who) was arriving and there were police escorts everywhere. They ignored me as I walked across the lobby and as soon as I got into my room, I crawled into bed.

Not a bad way at all to start a week of work!

** yes, this is very long, I need to work on figuring out how to get everything down and trying to not write a novel.....thanks for reading this far!