Yes, friends, the day has FINALLY come. The Karvelis couple has hit Buenos Aires. Nothing better than another Karvelis vacation. Though, sadly, we were missing our 4th member of the gang who was busy studying for finals…sorry, Lau.
Saturday morning, after a brief, last tango practice, I made my way to Starbucks (typical) to meet Mom and Dad. We began their Buenos Aires adventure at the Saturday Recoleta fair. The afternoon was spent visiting the Recoleta cemetery, walking around in the sunshine and eating lunch on the pretty balcony of the Recoleta cultural center. Later we enjoyed a street tango show and grabbed some coffee, where Ma and Pa got to try their first medialunas (those half-moon croissants) in Argentina.
After walking around in the afternoon, we headed back to the hotel so that they could get settled in. Naturally, in the Karvelis family vacation fashion, the hotel had lost their reservation for the week. So after the concierge made some new arrangements, I left them to take their cab to the other hotel nearby, figuring there was only so much that could go wrong with a simple cab ride, and headed back to my apartment for a few hours before dinner. I should have known better, because by the time my parents had arrived to pick me up, I could see the flustered looks on their faces. Apart from the language barrier between them and the Buenos Aires taxi drivers (who, by the way, aren’t known for their clear, Spanish speech), the other hotel was located on a big touristy street that is closed off to all cars, so the intersection only got them to a nearby location, not the exact address. So after a few minutes of lugging around their bags here and there, they eventually made it, though it had been far more complicated than they had anticipated. Later, as luck would have it, they hopped into a cab that they had to evacuate several minutes later, because the clutch had given out…
I had never really thought about it before, but I realized that whenever my family traveled together, we would either be touring the States or we would be in Europe, so finding an English-speaking person was never an issue. Here, however, the majority only speaks Spanish. Much also depends on where you are in the city, because near downtown you are more likely to find businessmen and women who may be bilingual, while in farther out, more residential areas it may be nearly impossible. It really is much more difficult to just “get by” as we had done in the past in European countries.
Finally, we were on our way to dinner. The restaurant was called Casa Felix. It was what is called here a “puerta cerrada,” meaning “closed door.” This is a specific type of restaurant in which a chef has converted his or her home into a restaurant and has room for probably only about 20 people, with the purpose of creating a more intimate setting, making you feel like you’re eating at a friend’s home. It has become very popular here. My mother had read somewhere that this is the “hip” thing to do among 20-year olds, so she wasn’t sure if trying out this type of restaurant would be awkward because of the very young crowd. It was, however, the complete opposite…I was the youngest in the home by at least 10 years. Nevertheless, the food was wonderful, with lots of fresh herbs and vegetables from his garden in the backyard. It’s a set price for each guest and includes about 4 courses plus a drink and appetizers at the start. It was interesting because every single person that night was American. Then again, paying around 100-150 pesos per person is a lot for the locals, while for us it’s still quite inexpensive.
Sunday morning we headed to the Feria de Mataderos, that gaucho fair that I had gone to way back in the first few weeks of my time here. The weather was great, warmer than it had been when I had gone, so it was nice to walk around and watch the folk dancing again. That afternoon, though we had hoped to go to the Argentine Lietuviu “Oktoberfest,” we realized it was much farther from us than we had expected. Instead, we headed back towards home and visited the Sunday San Telmo fair. This is the one with a lot of the antiques in addition to the usual leather goods, clothing, and jewelry. I don’t know if there was something specific going on that day, but at one point you had about 3 blocks of locals dressed in the WEIRDEST costumes…like, sorcerers and clowns and really, really random things. They were set up at different stands as if it was some kind of carnival. We had no idea what it was, so it was kind of funny, but mostly just really bizarre, and I, personally, felt uncomfortable. Especially with the clowns, because they terrify me. Later we headed to La Boca, a barrio that’s even farther south than San Telmo and is right near one of BA’s other ports. This barrio is pretty dicey, but on the weekends they have this amazing fair that’s called “El caminito.” Though extremely touristy, it consists of several small, cobblestone streets right along the river, lined with brightly colored houses and lots of art, tango, and loud, live music.
Dinner that evening was at a little place called La Peña de Colorado, a folk bar that had great food and also a concert every night. We enjoyed some lamb empanadas from southern Patagonia and a full, sizzling stone platter of steak, chorizo, and grilled vegetables.
Monday morning I had my final tango presentation. Everybody got all dressy and we presented our dances in front of the class and the professors. Unfortunately, one of the porteños in our group messed up the dance horribly, which made it really awkward considering he was the best dancer out of all of us, but my partner and I carried on and finished the dance just fine (Luckily Marcelo didn’t fall asleep in class this time…). Each group had to choose a theme for our presentation, so all of them were quite entertaining, some of them complete with props or set up as a scene in a restaurant or dance hall. Mine was set in a dance hall. We had 4 girls and 2 boys, so the idea was a kind of “fight” between the girls, vying for the boys’ attention. After the presentations, each group was called up individually for a one-question oral exam, during which I had to explain the main 8-step of tango in words. After that was over, I got my final grade, a 10/10!
After tango, I met up with mom and dad and we headed to lunch and celebrated my official recognition as a tango master with a cold Quilmes beer. While I was in class, they had walked down the long Florida Street, the main tourist district in downtown BA. Later we took a stroll down the grand Avenue 9 de Julio and past the Obelisk towards the main Plaza de Mayo. With my new knowledge from urban history class, I was able to give them a guide, of sorts, while wandering through the plaza (This was more so my way of reassuring them that I was, contrary to popular belief, actually retaining some useful information during my time abroad).
Before dinner, mom and dad got to meet the one and only Jesus. Jesus, who I believe I have mentioned does not speak English, made a valiant effort to at least say a few words. I was surprised to see that my mom actually remembered quite a bit of Spanish from her school days, and was able to understand some of what Jesus was saying. I had feared that this conversation would be horribly awkward, but I was glad to be proven wrong. However, to further aid the situation, I offered to add some comic relief and show my tango dance that had been filmed that morning. I’m glad I was able to take attention away from the major language barrier by showing my group make a fool out of themselves in front of our class earlier that day. That evening we had dinner at a restaurant called “Siga la vaca,” which translates into follow the cow. It was an all-you-can-eat steakhouse (there they call it a “tenedor libre” which literally means “free fork) with a full salad bar/buffet along with the barbeque. Delicious.
Tuesday morning I gave my final Spanish presentation and headed to the barrio of Palermo for the day. We visited the botanical gardens and the Japanese gardens as well. Palermo, as I have mentioned before, is a very large area. It is filled with mostly restaurants, residential areas, and parks, so besides grabbing some lunch and an ice cream, there wasn’t much else to do but just to enjoy the scenery.
On our way home from the parks, we spotted a hovering helicopter in the sky. Soon after, we saw a bunch of motorcycles and police cars drive by, and we assumed it must be the president Cristina Kirchner coming through. Oh, how wrong we were. That day was the soccer game between the two great club soccer teams, Boca Juniors and River Plate. It’s called the Superclasico, like the Super Bowl of soccer in Argentina. This procession of cars and motorcycles was followed by 5 or 6 buses, filled with drunk and screaming hooligans on their way to the game. If you’re not familiar with these two club teams, their games are insanity. They’re the games that you hear about where stuff gets thrown onto the field and at times people die from being trampled on or something. They’ve now put in barbed wire fencing all around the perimeter of the field to solve this problem. There’s even a whole culture revolving around these die-hard soccer fans. These fanatics, called Barras Bravas, are self-organized groups of fans that cheer for their specific club team. Look up Barras Bravas on youtube and you’ll find some crazy/kinda scary videos from these games.
But anyway, that night was a big night, because we went to La Cabrera. It is by far my favorite restaurant in BA. Although very touristy (because of its great food), I didn’t even care. We had a minor flaw in our evening plans, because I accidentally fell asleep and woke up 15 minutes before we had to be there for our reservation, so we lost the reservation and had to wait about an hour and a half to get a table…oops. But it’s ok, because when we did get it, the meal was totally worth it. And again, a full dinner with wine, steak, pasta, and dessert was probably around $60 USD for all 3 of us. The best part of the night was dessert, actually, because I insisted that we order the dulce de leche “panqueque”, what they call a pancake but what is essentially a crepe with dulce in it, covered with caramelized sugar. My mother has never been much of a sweet tooth, but I was shocked to see how much she enjoyed this, nearly licking the plate clean. I considered this a personal achievement.
Wednesday we slept in a bit and headed down to see the big Congress building. From there we walked east along a big street called Avenida de Mayo, which connects Congress to Plaza de Mayo. On that street we stopped in at the famous Café Tortoni for some afternoon coffee, the place where individuals like Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges and other intellectuals would meet to discuss business, politics, and, of course, soccer. We then headed to the tango museum, and saw lots of old tango shoes, records, and other memorabilia from the original days of tango and milongas (the places where tango is danced). We also walked around Puerto Madero, the barrio by the water, to have lunch at a wonderful Italian restaurant and to just enjoy the sunshine.
Dinner that evening was in the barrio of San Telmo, called Café San Juan. This place had a wonderful selection of seafood. After dinner we had a drink at a local milonga called Catedral. I thought we had been taken to the wrong place when the taxi stopped, because it looked nothing more than a regular, old building. Turns out it was the right place, and as we walked in we found ourselves in a large, dimly lit room with a variety of old and modern paintings covering the walls. Constructed out of a large, old barn, all the people sat by candlelight, around the dance floor either chatting with friends or waiting to be asked out to dance, as the crackly milonga songs played softly in the background. It was surprising to see that while some couples were very experienced, others were very much beginners. After an hour or so of people watching, we turned in for the night.
Thursday was their last full day in Buenos Aires, and I wanted to take them out of the city to see the calmer, slower side of Argentina. That morning we took the train to Tigre, the town right on the river delta that I had visited a few months back on an IES trip. Instead of taking the regular train from the main train station, we transferred to a different train that ran closer to the coast, with beautiful views of the river and surrounding suburbs. Upon our arrival in Tigre, we headed towards the boats and took a half hour trip to the area of Tres Bocas, another island where we spent the next several hours walking around the perimeter and looking at the homes and flowers along the banks. After making our way back to the mainland, we took a stroll down another main street along the water, stopping for lunch and later making our way back to the port for the street fair before heading back into the city.
Teatro Colón was next on the list. That evening before dinner we went to watch the Buenos Aires philharmonic orchestra at the theater. Having just reopened this past May due to some major renovations in preparation for the bicentennial celebration in the city, the theater was beautiful. The theater had been closed for about 4 years in order to complete a major restoration project. With its nearly perfect acoustics, it was modeled after the theater La Sala de Milan in Italy and it is comparable to the Sydney Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Decorated in scarlet and gold, the theater has about 2,500 seats and standing room for another 1,000. Unfortunately, we were up there in the standing area, because for some reason it was the only concert that week, so seats had sold out over 3 weeks before.
After the theater we went to a swanky art gallery/restaurant called Juana M for dinner. In addition to the regular barbeque menu, there was a large salad bar that included tons of vegetables and fresh mozzarella. Dessert was a tiramisú and another dulce de leche panqueque, most of which mother took care of, since it had become, after all, her favorite.
Friday was spent doing some last minute shopping (+4 boxes of delicious alfajores) and lunch, because by mid afternoon they had to head to the airport. Luckily the rest of the week had gone well without anymore typical Karvelis family vacation suprises, and after a bittersweet goodbye (considering I’d see them in 2 short weeks) I bid them farewell.
Harry Potter 7 had come out the previous day, but because I had been touring Tigre with the fam, I wasn’t able to see it on the day it premiered (which was a day before it premiered in the US, actually). So after leaving them I headed straight to the movies and had a date with myself to see the latest installment of the Harry Potter saga.
It was a good day.
