March 5,6 & 7

Life in the slow lane.


We've been taking care of logistics over the last 3 days; e.g. we spent time with the head of the Spanish Dept. at a local school, as David is inquiring about taking 10-20 hours of Spanish lessons. They gave him a written test to evaluate his level of knowledge and, given that he's been referencing our Spanish/English dictionary and phrase book constantly, he actually did pretty well. However, in order to take "beginner" group lessons, they need to find at least one more student (to form a group) - so they are posting adds and will call if they can put a class together.




All that test-taking and we worked up an appetite - so we had a late lunch at Cumana, http://www.buenostours.com/cumana-empanadas , known for having some of the best empanadas in the city (see me with the little morsels).






On Thursday we headed towards Swan Turismo, a local travel agency recommended by friends of friends (Argentinians in the US), we walked down Avenida Cerrito, which runs parallel to Av. 9 de Julio, the widest street in the world - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_de_Julio_Avenue) stopping to photograph a bunch of dog-walkers and their 25-30 charges - a very funny sight.




We met w/2 terrific travel agents (Santiago & Graciela - http://www.swanturismo.com.ar/) who are helping us plan two trips (to Iguazu Falls and Patagonia!). All we will say now is that they were a fountain of information and made some great suggestions. Stay tuned for more details.


All that walking and we worked up an appetite (notice a trend here?), so we stopped at another local restaurant - 788 Food Bar. The food was great (honey braised pork, sweet potatoes w/raspberries) as was the atmosphere - felt very European to us as Barbara stared out the window and across the street, and of course, saw it as "art"...photo op!



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Major accomplishment today (Friday) - well not so "major", but we did something practical - other than discovering another great restaurant. I was able to activate a GSM cell phone he borrowed from a friend, but not before Barbara and I spent several trips to phone kiosks and stores to figure out how to "unlock" it, replace the sim card and load it with new minutes from a local service provider. In the US this wouldn't be a major effort for us, but you should try doing this in Spanish!.


We have been using Skype to communicate back to the US but having a cell phone that works (thanks to our techie friend Rori, in the US, who also helped us to unlock it) makes it a bit easier to communicate when we are out and about locally. After all, you never know who we may want to call while walking on a glacier in El Calafate, Patagonia.


Since we've been eating most dinners in, after all, we are having steak fillets (lomo) for lunch, we decided to go out on the town last night (Friday)...so at 11:30pm we went to a local hotel/wine bar for drinks and (you guessed it) something light to eat.





On the way back to the apartment, we also did "a little shopping" - realizing that we needed bottled water (the water is fine to drink in BA but we prefer bottled water), so we qued at our local "convenience" store (this is at 1:30 a.m.) - We couldn't believe that this little store stayed open that late. The proprietor serves you through a small window, for obvious security reasons.



Back to the apartment for a late night movie and once again we saw 3:00am on the clock before turning out the lights.





Buenas Noches!