Advertisement
Published: March 23rd 2009
Chorizo and Proveleta at Miranda - Yum!
Proveleta is a big pieces of grilled cheese with oil and herbs. Sooo good ... if likely to kill us if we stayed!The last few weeks have been life "as usual" in Buenos Aires, if characterised by a consciousness that we could count on our fingers and toes how many days we had left here before going home to Sydney.
I was back at school for most of the last month and, as there was no one else at the school at the same level as me for two of the three weeks, I had three hours a day one on one. Great to be able to focus on talking and working on my own weaknesses, but it was VERY intense and I came home mentally exhausted each day. It was good to get a classmate for my final week. I finished with a reasonable level of Spanish that means I can now usually understand what people are saying, get my point across first time when talking to someone, and maybe even have a bit of a chat. Despite my accent, I generally get a reply in Spanish now which is an achievement in a city where people are pretty keen to use their english. Apparently, on top of my 'english' accent, it's obvious I learnt most
of my Spanish in Spain. I must sound weird!!!
Keen to make the most of our time, we've been getting out and about. We enjoyed a night at the tennis, watching mostly Argentineans and Spaniards, including Robredo, Nalbandian and Monaco, fight out the quarter finals of the ATP Tour event in Buenos Aires. We also checked out a Spanish restaurant with flamenco performances that we'd walked past and which sounded great. The flamenco was fine, the food terrible and, we discovered, the sangrias lethal! Think we'll stick to spanish in Spain!
(The unscheduled litre bottles of negra beers from Salta on the way home didn't help much either). The highlight, however, has been three return visits to Casa Coupage, the awesome restaurant where we had dinner with Ed and Trace, for their weekly wine tasting evenings. We became temporary "members" of their club to enjoy two nights of comparative tastings of Argentinean reds and one of premium whites, led by two sommeliers. Each tasting has included three wines that are continually topped up as needed, and a dinner of three little meals to taste with all three wines and see what matches best. It's helped us get to
know Argentinean wine in a really fun, relaxed way. It was an awesome concept and we were really sad to say goodbye when we left the final night
(Santiago and Ines were consummate hosts of these nights which became a Wednesday tradition).
Beyond this, we have kept to our usual form of seeking out new eating and drinking experiences, trying Sarkis, an Armenian restaurant that was already full and had a waitlist at 9:15pm (most restaurants are still empty at this time here!), discovering a great Vietnamese place (Green Bamboo) where we got a much needed hit of Asian flavours and drank some sensational, creative cocktails, and seeking out Patagonian lamb at Miranda, a fantastic parilla around the corner
(and probably the vendor of the tastiest argentinean chorizo we have found so far).
With the finish line in sight, a wardrobe I want to throw out and some great BA bargains to be had, I have applied myself methodically to the BA shopping scene, getting some additional exercise pounding the pavements of the microcentre, Santa Fe and Palermo and generally having a wonderful time. Not sure if I just haven't let myself in shops for a while, or
the Argentineans have some creative designers in their midst but it's been super. A bit like shopping in Aus with a mix of chains, international labels and local creations. David has got in on the action as well, so we now have a packing problem to sort out.
(It should be noted that I used more of a surgical strike approach to BA shopping than Anna's blanket bombing).
It's bizarre to think that we only have one trip left over here. It seems fitting that we're off to explore a few of wine regions of Argentina and Chile. Salud!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.076s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 10; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0387s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
