Day 6 Buenos Aires, Argentina

Thank you for the comments, please keep them coming.

 

First, we´d like to discuss the feral cats.  We are staying in Palermo, a few blocks from the Botanical Gardens.  While exploring the gardens yesterday, we were pleased to see hundreds of cats in the gardens, sunning themselves, grooming their fur on fountains, eating food left for them on park benches and stalking prey in the urban forest.  It was strange to see so many cats, but fun nonetheless.

 

Our dinner last night was out of this world.  Here are some actual Olivia quotes, with commentary.

 

On the meaning on our meal:

If I were to choke on some food and die, I would want it to be this food.

 

In a zen-like moment:

I can´t think about anything else except this food.  And maybe you (Chris).

 

We went to an old-school Parilla (grilled meat) restaurant in the Palermo neighborhood of BA.  Our waiter was immaculately professional.  His Spanish was of a sort that was very difficult to understand, the sort of Argentinian Spanish we´d heard about, with an accent one can imagine came straight our of the 1950s.  We ate scrumptious endive and heart of palm salad and shared a bife de ojo (rib eye) steak that was thicker than two decks of cards and pinker than the sunset on the Rio de la Plata.  We had a small bottle of Malbec and finished our meal with Flan con crema.  It was muy fantastico.  And, because we can´t help but report on the price, we did all of this for US$35.

 

Today we visited the San Temlo neighborhood and watched Tango on the streets which brought Olivia to tears and led her to exclaim, I want to give them all of my money! (Chris, cooler head prevailed).  We walked into La Boca neighborhood, one of the poorer neighborhoods in central BA.  For the first time, we saw some serious poverty and urban decay, garbage in the streets, loose dogs, buildings falling down on themselves.  It is sad, but part of any major city. We walked past the futbol stadium a few hours before a game.  We did tailgating BA style with loose dogs, 100s of policia and tasty tasty street meat.

 

(No major diarrhea yet)

 

Tonight we go to a tango show at La Tortóni, a classic, 19th century sort of place in the downtown area.  Tomorrow we fly to Mendoza.