Day 12: Buenos Aires

Today 10% of the trip is over, as Frank has nicely pointed out. I think too many years on the trading desk have made him overly analytical and numerical with these things, but it does put things in a certain perspective. In some ways this trip is flying by but we still have lots of places on the list...

Today we went back to the area of Palermo, which is where we spent the first day and where our abortive attempt at renting an apartment occurred. We had to meet up with the apartment owner to return the keys so we took the opportunity to explore the neighborhood more and have lunch at a place called Morelia which serves grilled pizza, an Argentinian specialty.



We took the subway (called the "Subte") part of the way to and from Palermo, and one of the lines (Subte A) actually has old wooden subway cars still, which was interesting. [For the linguists, "subte" is short for "subterraneo" which means "subterranean".]





On our walk to the Subte from Palermo, we passed through the neighborhoods of Abasto and Once. [This is where I attempt to be half as educational as Frank is in his blog posts...] Abasto is a working-class neighborhood without much of scenic interest but it is the area where the famous Argentinian tango singer Carlos Gardel grew up and there is a museum in the house where he used to live. Once is a historically Jewish neighborhood, although the community there has decreased as most Jews have moved to the suburbs. We did see a few Orthodox Jewish men as we walked around the area.

Anyway, it wasn't a particularly beautiful route but there were a few architecturally appealing buildings and some other interesting sights along the way.








Another exciting event today (especially for Mr. Only Brought 5 Pairs of Underwear) was that we got our laundry done at a local lavanderia - all for the low low price of 15 pesos (less than $5).

We made reservations to go to a tango show tomorrow night, and we're planning to do a day trip to Uruguay on Wednesday when the weather is supposed to be the nicest (low 70s). If we haven't mentioned it already, it's actually Fall here and the weather has been mostly sunny so far with temperatures in the 60s.

For dinner, we took a taxi back to the Palermo area to eat at Osaka, a trendy Japanese-Peruvian restaurant. The food was excellent and Frank ended up having a very green version of a Long Island iced tea that involved melon liqueur. Another excellent day!