South for the Summer: Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires, Argentina

The second week in BA, my mom and I moved to a different apartment in Palermo. This apartment was particularly cute: loft-style, with exposed brick and wood, and access to an outdoor patio and shared garden. Right up my alley…I could have easily lived there. Although apparently the monthly rent is $1400 US…in reality, would not be able to live there! Palermo is a really nice neighborhood with great restaurants and nightlife, but still residential and quiet (as long as you don’t live right next to a bar). Quite a change from the downtown atmosphere we had been in before.

My mom and I went to several museums our second week: Museo de arte latino de Buenos Aires (MalBA); el Museo de Bellas Artes, and the Museo de Evita. I enjoyed all three equally well, although I really appreciated the Degas Ballerinas at the Museo de Bellas Artes; they’re pretty much my favorite. I also really liked the Evita museum. For some reason my guidebook said that it “lacked the expected passion,” and I disagree. I thought it did a great job of portraying Eva Perron’s life, her work, and her style; I really got a feel for who she was. They also had a lot of video footage of her, which was nice. One thing I hadn’t realized is that she died so young – 33, of cervical cancer. She did a whole hell of a lot in her short 33 years. On a similar note we also visited the Recoleta cemetery, and saw her mausoleum, along with many others. Those things are pretty impressive, not the first time I’d seen one (they were in Parisian cemeteries), but some of them at Recoleta are incredibly large, and ornately decorated in all kinds of different styles. It was kinda cool and creepy at the same time, because you could peer into them and see peoples’ coffins covered in cobb webs, and pictures, and candles and stuff.

My mom and I also went on an awesome tour of the Teatro Colón, the main opera house in Buenos Aires. Everything is decorated in a very lavish style – it was built when Argentina was entering its golden age and wanted to make Buenos Aires the Paris of South America. Therefore, lots of French architectural and decorative styles are found in it. The real sight to see though, is the interior of he theater, its huge, has a massive georgeous chandelier, and Pavarotti even exclaimed that the acoustics are “problematic.” The acoustics in the opera are perfect, therefore no one can get away with a mistake – everyone here’s it. The opera house is so well designed that the performers, nor the orchestra use microphones: amazing!

And the best for last….BA seriously deserves a pat on the back for its food. On a recommendation from Kate, my mom and I splurged for a dinner at La Cabrera, basically an Argentinian steak house, where I died and went to heaven. First of all, I wouldn’t even call it a splurge because the bill came out to about 400 pesos total, which is 50 bucks each. Just wait till you hear what we had for 50 bucks each. We split a bottle of wine, and they serve you bread when you sit down (as they do at pretty much all restaurants in Argentina). We ordered a Salmon Carpacio appetizer, thinking that the meat dishes would probably be small. The Salmon carpacio was not only delicious, but im pretty sure there was an entire smoked salmon in there….ridiculous! Then came the meat. I ordered the tenderloin, and what came out were three small fist size hunks of meat, cooked perfectly, accompanied with all kinds of different little sauces and salads. Needless to say, it was a meal for the books, we even had leftovers for dinner the next night.

Oh yeah, and I got to hang out with Danny Osterweil – awesome, overall BA was awesome, despite my being ill for first part of it, and it being super cold for a week. Beautiful city, great food, great, music, great museums, great culture, great nightlife.

Church down the street from our apartment

Malba museum

Something special about Buenos Aires - no matter what kind of beverage you order (coffee, tea, a drink, beer) it always come with a little surprise nibble. This was my mom's favorite part about BA