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Published: January 10th 2011
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Buenos Aires Part I Welcome...sort of.
Our Argentinean vacation started off with a 5 hour flight to Panama and then a 7 hour flight to Buenos Aires. When we arrived at the airport we we went straight to the Peso ATM and got some money. I started counting the money, then looked at Maria and laughed, "Why do I count the money? I've never had a mistake and I sorta kinda finished counted the notes" So we gathered our bags and went to the taxi stand. This young kid seemed awfully eager to help, not one else spoke much English at the taxi stand so we figured what the heck. I just took 10 X 100 Peso notes out of the ATM and handed two to him for our taxi to BA which he said was 170. He laughed and showed me that I just handed him 2 X 10 Peso notes. He said it's happened before and we should take the receipt and go to the ATMs Bank in Buenos Aires tomorrow to tell him what happened. I thought how ironic since this is the first time I barely counted my ATM money. We handed him another 200
Peso and on our way. 5 minutes later I had a really shitty felling - we just got scammed. Welcome to Buenos Aires.
After that $200 peso lesson I knew it was time for a good steak and a bottle of wine.
We arrived at Hotel Novotel (MJK 4.6 stars) at around 10PM (we left our house at 3AM and there is a 2 hour time zone change) and then took a walk to find a place for dinner. The air was warm and humid. It was summer time - nice.
First day It was weird to travel nearly all day and be in almost the same time zone so we woke up at a normal hour and had our continental breakfast and off we went to walk along the newly renovated water front. (see pictures). Beautiful area with some of the cities best restaurants. After walking long enough to get sun burned we took a taxi to San Telmo and walked a well known pedestrian street Defensa. It's a pedestrian street lined with store fronts and peddlers selling leather, old coins, old (hyper inflated) notes, Tango music, clothes, and all of the other touristy stuff you'd
expect to fine. My favorite though are the street performer. Reminded me of Les Rambles in Barcelona. See a few of the pictures, but of course we like watching the Argentine tango performers. There is one well known group that performs at a main intersection and on the flight back I saw a tourist promotion that had them in it. It's fun to watch them playfully take dancing partners away from each other.
We ate a selection of cured Argentinean meats and cheeses at Bar El Federal (MJK 3.8 stars) in a well known square. Pretty good. Took a taxi back to the hotel:
A Note On Taxis The taxi set up in BA is great. There are Taxi's everywhere, you can go nearly anywhere for 10, max 20 bucks (US), and we took several shorter trips for just a few dollars. They never tried to rip us off (except for at the taxi stand at the airport, but he wasn't the taxi driver), they were polite, helpful, never expected a tip, and were very appreciative when we did. (it is not customary to tip them, they even round down if it's .30 pesos.
Milonga - La Viruta Tango
The second night in Buenos Aires we received a great tip from an attendant a the hotel. http://www.lavirutatango.com/ (MJK 4.4 Starts). The learning atmosphere was good, the age range was 20-40, it was not pretentious, and they served light snacks and alcohol. Perfect. Only slightly marginal bad thing I can say is the floors were linoleum which is tough on your feet especially if you're trying to learn rock and roll. Nonetheless, I really respect how social dancing is so widely accepted and practiced in Argentina and it'd be great to see something like that in the US.
Private Argentine tango Lesson Monday morning we ran some errands, reserved a few tours, and generally didn't move that fast. In the afternoon however we arranged to have a private lesson with a young professional Argentine Tango dancer we had met at La Viruta Tango. Her name was Eliana and she worked in a relatively small studio that was in an apartment building. She helped us improve some very basic technique and then also gave us a few new figures to learn and practice. She was very practical, hands on, and moved thru the material quickly and it was
well worth our time and money ($50).
Cemetery The cemetery in La Recoleta is an interesting site to see as it houses the remains of the who's who of Buenos Aires. Their bodies are in shrined in mausoleums built to various architectural styles.
Milonga - Take two Eliana gave us a great tip on another Milonga. The atmosphere was great, the skill level was very high and the crowd was even younger. If I spent a few more years in BA this would be a second home. Villa Malcom
The zoo I haven't been to the zoo in years so we figured why not. See pictures below, but I have to say I won't write as I'm not a huge fan of the idea of a zoo to begin with.
Shopping Hat's off to Maria for planning 84%!o(MISSING)f the details of our trip. I think that means I owe her a present, but after many hours our first attempt failed. More on this later. I'm sure we'll try again later. The mall in Palermo and Galleria Pacifico are probably your best stops for good shopping....
Cabana Las Lilas - Best steak dinner we had
in Argentina
From Wikitravel and whoever wrote it is right on:
Cabaña Las Lilas Alicia Moreau de Justo 516, Tel. +54 4313-1336. This place had the reputation of being the best place to eat steak in Buenos Aires. The steaks are enormous and succulent. Be warned if you eat here, count on them having to roll you out as you will be near explosion (prob best to wear trousers with elasticated waists!). Its a constant struggle not to stuff yourself with the mouth watering appetizers before your steak even arrives. When it does, you may chuckle at the little plastic cow figurine jabbed into the meat, smiling at you and bearing the words “Estoy jugoso," - "I am juicy" (meaning rare). Count on spending around 85 pesos for a steak, 12 for a beer, and 80 for a bottle of wine from their extensive list of Argentine and international vintages.
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