Jamon y Queso

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We didn't end up getting to Colonia last weekend because the cheap boat seats were sold out. We bought tickets for this weekend on the 8:45am boat. We'll see how getting to a boat port in an unfamiliar part of town at 7:45 (our check-in time) works out. It should be an adventure.

The weekend was relaxing. We spent Saturday at La Boca, the brightly colored and very touristy part of town. We decided to take the subte (subway) which, as it turns out, lets you off much farther from La Boca than it looks on the map. After spending a sketchy hour wandering through what certainly isn't the best neighborhood in BA, we came to the conclusion that the map they gave us is far from perfect once you get very far from the city center. We did eventually find what we were looking for and spent several cheerful hours watching streetside tango shows, looking at crafts, avoiding the restaurant seaters (you know what I mean...the guys who are paid simply to get you to sit down at a table in their restaurant. Those guys are ferocious but hilarious here.) and paying way too much for a pizza. We found a colectivo (bus) home that let us right off by where we lived.

Sunday, I went to the Recoleta market again during the morning. Walking through the craft stalls is like visiting a museum. Some of the artists are amazing! You also meet a lot of interesting characters there.

We had an afternoon class trip to Tigre, a BA suburb on the river delta. We took a very pretty boat ride around the little inhabited islands of the delta. Apparently real estate there is relatively cheap, but the cost of living is outragous because there is no land access to anything and no potable water. We learned that people had to get their food from a supermarket boat. I now know all about how you signal for the boat to stop with an empty shopping bag tied to a post on your pier, how expensive potable water is, and how you have to take a taxi-boat to the fruit market if you don't want to pay the 20% higher supermarket boat prices....we had a great tour guide. We took the long way home, stopping at the pretty but relatively new San Isidro cathedral on the way back (and getting into a minor traffic accident...after our bus driver managed to turn down two impossibly small side streets in a row, he wasn't so lucky avoiding the little green car that was turning in front of him. We got to walk around town while he settled with the driver.) We followed a downtown Buenos Aires street all the way from San Isidro back. The same street runs from the 12000th block down to block 100 around were we are. That is a lot of blocks to travel in heavy traffic....luckily, the buses here are so comfortable that everyone just feel asleep on the 1.5 hour ride home.

Monday was a normal, uneventful day, but Tuesday....well, I don't know how much US news covers huge BA events, but this one should have been covered. We were given the day off of school and told to stay home to avoid getting into the middle of the gigantic (we're talking hundreds of thousands to possibly a million people involved) protest about some new sales and agricultural laws being passes. Like good little clueless US kids (Mom, if I hadn't promised you I'd stay safe, I would have gone out there to see the protest in person...we missed out on something big, but I didn't get shot or anything exciting like that, so I guess it balances out), we stayed home all day watching the news (and occasionally going up on the roof terrace to see the helicopters flying over). I've never seen so many people gathered in one place in my life. The largest road in town was blocked off for kilometers. The speakers were still shouting way into the night, so I don't know what the final outcome was. Hopefully the lawmakers noticed the gigantic swarm of unhappy people and did something about it. Any laws which are that unpopular should probably be reviewed. (these are the same laws that are making food priced twice as high as they usually are in BA)

The title of this post refers to one of my BA observations. This part of the world is known for its beef, right? My family here only owns one, yes one, butter knife. All of the rest are steak knives. (It's a pain when you just want to put jam on your toast.) In restaurants, though, the sandwich menu is dominated by only one thing: jamon y queso. You can have it an endless number of different ways...with or without tomatoes, on every kind of bread imaginable, with mayo or without, with crusts removed, stacked in 2s, 3s, or even 4s...but there are no other types of meat on the sandwich menu. Pizzas, empanadas, even potato chips are flavored with ham and cheese. Where, I ask, is this famous beef? It seems to me that they only use it for the gigantic steaks. Maybe it would be selling it short to put it on a little sandwich. I don't know....

I'm off to buy movie tickets to Wall-E at the most amazing, gigantic, plush red-walled theater I've ever seen. A bunch of us are going to test out our Spanish skills tonight, American movie style.

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Comments

[Mark Mathewson]

The big demonstration
Here's some background on the demonstration from the BBC: Great post, Margie: keep 'em coming! Love, Dad

[Mom]

Wall-E
Good choice...almost no words in the show according to what Molly said. She loved it, by the way. I hope you did too Glad you avoided the big protest. Way to go! Stay safe. I am counting on you to use your good sense! Take care!

[Nichol]

comments!
You should eat things with a considerable amount of ginger in them, if possible, before that boat trip. It'll help out with seasickness for at least a few hours. Also, wow on the protest - I heard nothing about it until reading this.

[margiem]

Protest
Links are automatically stripped from the posts, so I couldn't see where you were sending me, Dad. If you can pass it along in email format, it would be really interesting to see. Love you!