Lazing on a sunny Sunday afternoon
Another month, another dissapointing Argentine hostel breakfast. That said, the fact that I made it up for breakfast was relatively impressive. Aina and I decided it was time to do some more exploring, given that the weather was holding fair (it had apparently been cloudy, rainy and horrible on Friday, so for once luck with the weather was with me), so we headed off to see some of Bs As' Sunday markets, specifically those in Recoleta and Palermo. These are two of the richest and trendiest of the suburbs, with the former holding one of the city's tourist "must-sees", the Cementario Recoleta. Yes, I know, cemeteries aren't normally my idea of a tourist attraction either, but this one is more like a miniature necropolis, it's all family tombs and mausolea and the like, rather than just gravestones, with an extraordinary variety of architectural styles. The typical tourist draw is Evita's grave in the Duarte family mausoleum, but we didn' bother with that, just contenting ourselves with walking around goggling at the wide range of tomb designs. There's an awful lot of Generals in there...
After we'd had our fill of admiring graves, we headed out to have a look around the craft market which sets up at the weekends just outside the cemetery in Plaza Francia. This was actually mostly surprisingly good stuff - proper artisan- and craft-work rather than the mass-produced tat I've seen in most markets since coming to South America. The leatherwork in particular was very very impressive. Given how little space a backpack allows one for shopping, I restricted myself to getting a little leather wrist-band, but on a short holiday you could have a field day at these kinds of markets. Argentina isn't ultra-cheap, but for the higher-value, well-crafted stuff, it's still pretty good.
At any rate, from the markets we headed off up another of Buenos Aires' wide avenues and found ourselves a little pavement restaurant for an alfresco late-lunch (my chicken was ok, but Aina's Ensalada Completa really was a complete salad, with ham, eggs, potatoes, carrots and I think olives in with the usual suspects in a really quite sizeable bowl). From there we wandered up to a subway stop and headed further out to Palermo, possibly Buenos Aires' most stylish district, and a lovely place to walk around, with parks, tree-lined streets and little cafes all over the place. The market there was a bit less impressive, but still interesting to see (this one was more commerical stuff, T-shirts and artwork and the like, rather than craftwork). After a bit of exploring there, we headed back into town, where Aina had moved to another hostel, the HostelSuites on Florida (where I am now, incidentally).
After leaving Aina there, I was headed back over to Milhouse, when I discovered a crowd on Ave de Mayo, near the end around Plaza de Mayo. It turned out they were gathered around watching a circus skills performance, with tightrope walking, trapeze and some really quite impressive acrobatics. This little unexpected free extra entertainment easily helped while away another half an hour or so before my return to the Milhouse. There, I ended up chatting with two South African brothers, Alan and Julian, who had been based in the UK for a while and had taken a break to travel around South America. With a minimum of arm-twisting, I agreed to go for steaks and wine again (I know, it's a hard life this travelling malarkey...), and once again we weren't able to go to the preferred venue and ended up back at La Casa, my impromptu venue the night before. This time I didn't go for one of the deals on the menu, and just went for the biggest monster steak (a Bife de Chorizo), at the majestic price of just over 5 pounds, which promptly turned out to be around the size of a large dinner plate and about two inches thick. With the aid of a bottle of La Carcassonne (also eminently drinkable, and also less than 4 of your pounds sterling), we eventually battered our way through these monsters, and headed back to the Milhouse, where Julian and, shortly thereafter, Alan succumbed to the effects of a bloody long day, a flight from Cape Town to Buenos Aires and about half a cow, and sought out their bunks. I lasted only a little longer myself, I have to admit. Gluttony is very tiring.
After we'd had our fill of admiring graves, we headed out to have a look around the craft market which sets up at the weekends just outside the cemetery in Plaza Francia. This was actually mostly surprisingly good stuff - proper artisan- and craft-work rather than the mass-produced tat I've seen in most markets since coming to South America. The leatherwork in particular was very very impressive. Given how little space a backpack allows one for shopping, I restricted myself to getting a little leather wrist-band, but on a short holiday you could have a field day at these kinds of markets. Argentina isn't ultra-cheap, but for the higher-value, well-crafted stuff, it's still pretty good.
At any rate, from the markets we headed off up another of Buenos Aires' wide avenues and found ourselves a little pavement restaurant for an alfresco late-lunch (my chicken was ok, but Aina's Ensalada Completa really was a complete salad, with ham, eggs, potatoes, carrots and I think olives in with the usual suspects in a really quite sizeable bowl). From there we wandered up to a subway stop and headed further out to Palermo, possibly Buenos Aires' most stylish district, and a lovely place to walk around, with parks, tree-lined streets and little cafes all over the place. The market there was a bit less impressive, but still interesting to see (this one was more commerical stuff, T-shirts and artwork and the like, rather than craftwork). After a bit of exploring there, we headed back into town, where Aina had moved to another hostel, the HostelSuites on Florida (where I am now, incidentally).
After leaving Aina there, I was headed back over to Milhouse, when I discovered a crowd on Ave de Mayo, near the end around Plaza de Mayo. It turned out they were gathered around watching a circus skills performance, with tightrope walking, trapeze and some really quite impressive acrobatics. This little unexpected free extra entertainment easily helped while away another half an hour or so before my return to the Milhouse. There, I ended up chatting with two South African brothers, Alan and Julian, who had been based in the UK for a while and had taken a break to travel around South America. With a minimum of arm-twisting, I agreed to go for steaks and wine again (I know, it's a hard life this travelling malarkey...), and once again we weren't able to go to the preferred venue and ended up back at La Casa, my impromptu venue the night before. This time I didn't go for one of the deals on the menu, and just went for the biggest monster steak (a Bife de Chorizo), at the majestic price of just over 5 pounds, which promptly turned out to be around the size of a large dinner plate and about two inches thick. With the aid of a bottle of La Carcassonne (also eminently drinkable, and also less than 4 of your pounds sterling), we eventually battered our way through these monsters, and headed back to the Milhouse, where Julian and, shortly thereafter, Alan succumbed to the effects of a bloody long day, a flight from Cape Town to Buenos Aires and about half a cow, and sought out their bunks. I lasted only a little longer myself, I have to admit. Gluttony is very tiring.
posted by Pat at 12:00 pm
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