I didn't feel so cold then

El Ataneo

Uy, I'm very behind. Last week I was busy being a tourist and a tour guide, and this week I was catching up on all the homework I hadn't done. My dad visited last week, and it was really fun.


Recoleta Cemetery

We did all my favorite things: pictures in Recoleta Cemetery; Don Carlos, the restaurant where there's no menu and Don Carlos just brings you a ton of amazing food; Carlito's, the panqueque restaurant with 700 items on the menu; the parks in Palermo.


Recoleta Cemetery

We did a bunch of things I'd been wanting to do for a while: the Sunday San Telmo market; MALBA, a great art museum; lots of yummy yummy restaurants; a tour of the Running Water Palace that turned out to be pretty much a toilet museum (it seems so obvious now when you look at the name); more pictures in La Boca; a "tour" of a mosque, El Ataneo, a cool bookstore that used to be a theater.



San Telmo Market

We did some things I hadn't thought of before his visit: a small folkloric music concert; a tango show; a sneaky tourist trap; a pickpocketing incident, a taste of rabbit.


Museum in Palacio de Aguas Corrientes

Here are some highlights, but I'm afraid they will give the wrong impression of the trip because all the interesting stories are from things that didn't go quite as expected. So, to re-emphasize, on the whole it was really fun and went really well.




Mosque

The mosque tour was something I'd wanted to do forever, ever since I saw the huge, beautiful mosque in Palermo. But they only offer tours when I'm in class, so I wasn't able to go until I skipped class on Tuesday to hang out with my dad. Unfortunately it was not much of a tour; it was more like a 45-minute lecture on the basics of Islam. It was especially boring for my dad because he doesn't know much Spanish! On the upside, I did get some really cool pictures.


Palermo Park

One time we were looking for somewhere to get a snack and saw a place called El Puerto Rico. That sounded interesting, so we approached and tried to figure out what it was, but it was a little mysterious, as the windows were curtained. Then a woman came out and pulled us in, saying, "Come in and see, it's a free show," and we saw a man singing tango on a stage in the restaurant and decided to stay. We were almost literally tourist trapped! Pretty funny. They also had flamenco dancing and drumming that was really cool, even if it was a tourist trap.


Jardín Botánico

That tango show was really something. I wanted to avoid going to one of those really expensive, cheesy dinner show things that are all over the place, so I found something at a cultural center. Sounds pretty classy and artsy, right? And it was cheap to boot. As we waited for the show to begin, I read the impressive bios of the two dancers: they were hired by the embassy to put on cultural shows in other countries, they had been in the movie Evita. Turns out though that that movie is old enough that they were a little past their prime, and we were sitting so close that it was hard not to notice the wrinkles. The other unexpected thing is that it was very theatrical; I think my favorite part was when the woman mimed having a baby. During one of the acts she ran out into the audience and asked to sit next to me and handed me her purse. I think it was like we were at a dance, because she came back a couple more times like she was ready to go, but when I started handing her purse back she shook her head and ran back to the stage for more dances with her irresistible new love interest.


Jardín Botánico

The pickpocketing was very unfortunate. My dad's camera was stolen from his front pocket while we were on an extremely crowded subway car. The worst part is all the lost pictures, since it was near the end of the week :( Speaking of crowded subway cars, the other day I rode one that was absolutely ridiculous. I was desperately holding onto the railing above to avoid falling into the laps of the sitting people because the crowd was pushing so much. I very seriously considered giving up and just sitting in a stranger's lap, and it was a miracle, truly incredible, that I managed to cross the car and get off at my stop. It was so crazy that it made my day.



La Boca

I can't really think of any more notable stories, but maybe I will later. Maybe I'll have my dad do a guest blog entry!


La Boca

I skipped class again last Tuesday for a lovely reason, to go to Colonia with Alex. He is Rose's friend since before birth and now goes to Brown. Colonia is a cute little Uruguayan town that's only an hour-long ferry ride across the river (the bay?).



We walked around the sycamore-lined streets and had mate in an extremely colorful café. Alex tried his first alfajor there. We tried a hamburger place that Rose said had the best burgers in the world, but I think we have different concepts of the best burger in the world. I pictured something thick and juicy, but I’m a lifelong carnivore and she only started eating red meat in Argentina. It did have very unique toppings, including corn and peas.



My favorite part was this magical wooden spiral:



We saw it from far away and were wondering how to get to it, and then we walked by a cultural center with an old man standing outside. Alex peered in and the man said, “Go on in.” I asked him what was inside, an art gallery? “Go ahead,” was all he said. So we went. After passing through a little art gallery we walked outside and found the spiral. Doesn’t it look magical? We just hung out there for quite a while, it was so neat.