At midnight I caught my 14 hour flight from Madrid to Buenos Aires. The journey was pretty uneventful and the in-flight food surprisingly edible (paella). I am staying in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires. The area is full of very cool, independent shops (mostly fashion, food and design), neat tree-lined boulevards and yummy mummies. Rather similar to Kensington in London (or more accurately the posher parts of Tel Aviv in Israel), I could picture myself living here very happily for the rest of my life.
Having unpacked my bags I headed out for a walk around the parks near the hostel and basked in the golden glow of summertime.
Our appetites wetted (sp?), we then headed out to dinner at a local steak restaurant. With the bread we were given a tomato salsa and olive tapenade. I ordered the local speciality of steak "de Chorizo" which was over an inch thick and arrived as the dictionary definition of medium rare. My enjoyment of the food was somewhat hampered though by the realisation that I was in the 48th hour of wearing the same dirty clothes (t-shirt and jeans) while the rest of the table were shining in shirts and blazers. Feeling somewhat inferior at this moment, I did what I do best - I massively overcompensated by speaking at 1000 mph.
Thankfully, several hours of drinking games later reduced the others to my sweaty, disgusting state and we ended the night on a level!
Day 8
Today was the day when Tom, Lizzie and Josie were due to fly into Buenos Aires to join me. More importantly though, today was the day I was due to receive my cleaned laundry! To celebrate the arrival of both, we headed out that evening to a Buenos Aires institution - La Cabrera. Speak to anyone who has travelled to any part of South America and there is one restaurant they will recommend without exception - Palermo´s La Cabrera. Anyone who has spoken to me for the last few weeks will know that there is one place I have been looking forward to above all else on my travels - La Cabrera!
So what makes this restaurant so good? Firstly, it is near impossible to get into. We arrived at 8.45pm to find more people queuing outside the restaurant than sitting inside. As we were rather a large group (9 people), we ended up waiting for just short of 3 hours. Secondly, whilst you queue the staff hand out free glasses of champagne. If I must fault this system, it is their overgenerosity. 3 hours of near constant champagne re-fills reduced me to a cartoon drunk, hugging everyone and proclaiming my love for the world. Realising that my stomach was now in a desperate state, I formed a crack squad of food raiders. We waited for people to leave their table and then attacked, stripping the leftover breadsticks bare. This backfired though at one point when I accidently attacked a freshly laid table and the posh customers sat down to find a crime scene rather than fine dining.
We eventually sat down and it was nearly 1am by the time our food arrived. The bread was served with an olive tapenade (a little too strong for my liking) and roasted garlic bulbs (one of the greatest tastes on earth). I ordered the Kobe beef for my main course, which arrived with an explosion of side-dishes. On the left-hand side you will find potatoes, mini sweetcorns with red peppers, a garlic hummus and an olive paste. Above my plate you will find a bowl of salad with a delicious dressing. On the right was mashed potato, mashed sweet potato, apple sauce and a sweet onion chutney. The wine was a rather fine Argentine Malbec, packed full of strong caramel, deep fruit and tabacco flavours. The star of the show though was the steak. Or steaks I should say. Because in a moment of madness I ordered 500g of Kobe beef - enough to feed a small army. Words cannot do justice to the taste. Comparing the Kobe beef to the mere sirloins ordered by my friends proved to all present how the former was vastly more rich, more complex, and softer than the latter (and lets be fair, the sirloins were pretty yummy already). Kobe beef is made from selectively bred Japanese cows which are fed mostly on beer and massaged daily. You could almost hear the meat purr as you ate.
This was only 1/4 of my Kobe mountain.
Rather quirkily, the bill came with a jar of lollipops. I may have taken about 50.
Day 9: Tourism
I eventually fell asleep at 5am after a pretty amazing night and was up at 10am the next day to begin seeing the sights of BA. Arriving in the town centre, we let Josie commence the map reading. What was stop number one? Why one of the central legal courts of course! You can take the girl out of law school, but ... Dragging us back to the holiday, I took over the map-reading and led us to the Galleria Pacifica (a shopping centre akin to Selfridges) where we marvelled at the elaborate paintings on the ceiling. We then walked to the Plaza de Mayo to visit the Casa Rosada and reenact Evita underneat the famous balcony. Josie´s singing was particularly good.
(Look out for the three of us on the landing)
For lunch (and to avoid the midday scorching heat) we walked to the city´s docklands for a riverside meal. Reclining on some of the deepest sofas ever it finally began to dawn on us that exams were over, we were abroad and it was SUMMERTIME in March.
The girls had a vegetable tart. From the bits I stole from their plate this was a little too healthy for my liking, but it certainly looked the part.
Tom and I went for sushi, having sworn off meat for life after the previous night´s excesses.
We then decided to catch the train home in rush hour - not a good idea in Argentina´s heat. I ended up with my shoulder in Lizzie´s mouth, Josie vertically spooning my back and my hands cupping some poor Argentine man´s breasts.
I think now is the time for a siesta!
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