Monthly Archives: March 2010

Miranda: Top quality lunch at a great price!

Posted on by

Success!!  I think we’ve mentioned in some of our other posts that our dining experience in Buenos Aires has been a bit hit-or-miss thus far.  We’ve been to a few restaurants that are great, and just as many that are mediocre (as well as one or two we wouldn’t let our dog eat at, if we had one).

Today, after a long morning of getting our heads back into Spanish class after a weekend off, we were starving and headed over to Palermo Hollywood to check out a Mexican restaurant we’d heard was good (Taco Box – it was closed, so we’ll have to give it a try another time).  By the time we walked the 30 minutes there from our school, we were starving and quickly ran into Miranda.  Every table on the sidewalk was full, and they had a decent lunch special, so we thought we’d check it out.

Miranda entrance image

Our server initially only gave us the regular menu (which didn’t include the special lunch set menu) – not sure if this is because he was trying to up-sell us or because it’s the only menu in English – we’re giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming the latter.  Once we asked for the daily menu, it took us no time at all to choose from the multiple options offered (did I mention that we were starving?).  We each had impressive appetizers (yay chorizo!), big main plates (chicken and veggie skewers for me, steak sandwich for Ryan), drinks and coffees for 90 pesos (~$23 US), including tip.  Just to put that in perspective, one of the aforementioned restaurants we wouldn’t let our dog eat at cost us closer to 150 pesos (~$40 US) – granted, that was dinner, but Miranda was far better in terms of ambience, food quality and service.

All in, Miranda is a winner in our book.  We’ll definitely be back again to take advantage of their great lunch deal and plan to put it in our dinner rotation as well!

Tip for learning spanish #1: Take your wine home!

Posted on by

Perhaps the best tip ever:

Podríamos tomar el vino para llevar?

=

Can we take the wine to go?

And the answer… YES!!!

Que Fantastico!!!

Wine Bottle Image

These probably cost only $2. Total. Viva!!

Yes… in Argentina, you can order a super cheap yet awesome bottle of wine at a restaurant, drink half and then take the rest home for later.  We are building a large collection of half full bottles

!Viva Argentina!

How to rent an apartment in Buenos Aires

Posted on by

We finally found a great new short-term apartment here in Buenos Aires. Finding the right short-term rental is far more complex than you might think, so read on for our reviews of all the agencies we worked with and a very important list of tips/tricks to make sure you get a good place and don’t get taken.

Yesterday we finally agreed on a new apartment.  Even though we didn’t decide until 3:30pm yesterday, the gang at ApartmentsBA were able to let us move in at 5:20pm which was pretty awesome.  The apartment isn’t perfect–it could use some more light and we wish we had a patio and a dining table–but it is huge, has a great kitchen is in a perfect location in the heart of Recoleta and perhaps most importantly, it has a king sized bed!  Most of the beds down here are tiny double beds and while Jen and I like each other, it hasn’t been so much fun waking up every time the other person moves for the last 2 weeks 🙂  Pictures of our new place down below.

Before the pictures of our new place, we thought we’d give a little bit of an overview of the process we went through to find this place and some brief reviews of the agencies we worked with and some general tips/tricks.

Continue reading →

Random observations on Buenos Aires

Posted on by
Some early observations from our experience so far in Buenos Aires – to be added to periodically:
  • They love their dogs.  We’ve never seen a major city with so many dogs (as pets, not strays), especially so many big dogs.  Seems that the favorite breeds here are golden retrievers, boxers, labs.  There are some small dogs, but not nearly as many as in San Francisco (thankfully).  They’re all exceptionally well-behaved – many aren’t even on leashes and just trot along right next to their owners.  They don’t chase after other dogs or even seem to have interest in people other than their owners (for example, me – who wants to pet every single one of them).  Very impressive obedience training.  And the dog walkers are all power-walkers with 8-10 dogs on average.
  • A consequence of the plethora of dogs is the “dogpiles” on the sidewalks – everywhere.  Apparently it’s not a norm to pick up after your dog . . .
  • Everything starts late here.  Tonight (Sunday) we went out to grab a quick dinner and get to bed early before getting up at an ungodly hour (read: before 11am) to start Spanish classes tomorrow.  The Mexican restaurant we wanted to go to was empty when we walked by – we thought maybe they were closing, until we overheard them telling another couple that they didn’t open for another half hour. At 8:30 on Sunday night.  Wow.
  • There’s graffiti everywhere.  Everywhere.  On the sides of buildings in our (quite upscale) neighborhood.  On the walls of the cafe where we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast the other day.  On the bases of statues in the city parks.  They’ve had to fence in some of important monuments and statues to prevent them from being graffitied.
  • Perhaps offsetting the last observation, there are trees everywhere.  We are currently living in Palermo Soho, right near a number of the city’s parks, which are all wonderfully green.  But even walking around exploring different neighborhoods and wandering down random streets, they’re all lined with trees (see our pics).
  • Most of the aforementioned city parks are fenced in.  For example, the park that was the site of the attempted purse snatching is completely fenced in, with only two entrances/exits.  Seems like that might make it less than ideal for an illegal grab-and-run operation . . .  We’ve come across one park so far that’s not surrounded by a fence – beautiful Las Heras Park.  Haven’t yet figured out what necessitates the fences at all the other parks – let us know if you have insights here.
  • Cheap wine can be good wine.  We ordered a half bottle of Malbec at dinner tonight and paid ~$4 . . . at a restaurant . . . and it was good.  Seriously.  Given the amount of wine we drink, we may well save a few hundred dollars a month on wine alone vs. what we would be paying at home!

Our first tango show (and lessons!)

Posted on by

To mark our one-week anniversary as porteños, we decided to get our first exposure to the sensual dance that started right here in Buenos Aires – tango.  Our language school recommended Complejo Tango (which offers an evening of “lessons”, dinner and a show for ~US$60/person), so we got all dressed up and headed out across town to the theater.  We were a bit surprised to arrive right on time for the lessons and find only 4 other people there. The room slowly filled up as the buses sent to pick up tourists from all the hotels in town arrived, and we started half an hour late (not bad for Latin America!).  We quickly learned one basic step and then practiced while trying not to step on the toes of all the other tourists crammed into the tiny dance studio.  While we’re hardly pros now, it was fun to get a taste of what dancing the tango might be like, and we’re hoping to try out real lessons once we get settled into a routine here.

We were highly skeptical of the food that would be served in a small theater prior to the show, but we were pleasantly surprised.  As we’ve noted in previous posts, our food experience has been somewhat hit-or-miss so far.  But this easily ranked in the top half of dinners we’ve had thus far- and the endless wine helped too!  The show was entertaining – walked the audience through the evolution of tango over the last century, using different costumes for each period.  The live band was a nice touch, and while we heard a bit too much from the lounge singer between dances, the dancers were incredible and solidified our resolve to learn to tango while we’re here.

Argentine tango dancers image

Argentine tango involves dramatic costumes and a lot of leg

While this definitely had the potential to be a cheezy tourist trap, all in all it was a fun introduction to tango and a good evening out.  Next, it’s off to the milongas!

Week 1 in Buenos Aires

Posted on by

We’ve officially been Argentinian for a full week now! Soon, we won’t even remember how to speak english.

We’ve been bad about updating the blog, mainly because we’ve been mostly out exploring, and then the little time we do spend online has been prioritized for one or more of the following:

-Researching spanish school:   We start on Monday at Vamos Spanish

-Looking for a longer term apartment: There are roughly a bazillion apartment rental companies and it is a bit overwhelming to sort through all of the options–I think we spent 8+ hours researching yesterday alone. We are going to visit our first couple of apartments this afternoon, so we’ll see…

-Trying to figure out where to eat:  We had some good and some very bad luck with walking into random restaurants on the street.  I think we don’t yet know how to recognize a place that sucks, so we’ve been reading more reviews lately.

–Using Google Translate: To prepare ourselves to go out and do things like drop of laundry:  “Para lavar y sacar.  debemos regresar manana a las 11?”

-Using our spanish learning software Fluenz:   Expensive, but really good!

-Trying to figure out what futuristic Argentine technology makes this possible:

Buenos Aires 25 hours image

Anyway, we promise to post more regularly and do more than just bullet point summaries (especially once we have a more comfortable apartment), but for now here are some pics from our first week:  Buenos Aires Week 1 pics

Ciao!

Quick catch-up on first few days in Buenos Aires

Posted on by

We have been lax in posting over the last couple of days, and we don’t have much time now, but we thought we should do a quick summary of some highlights of our first couple of days here in Buenos Aires (with more details to come later):

-Our apartment is just ok, but it is in a cool neighborhood

-Jen found a cockroach in the bathroom; this is worrisome.

-There was a failed attempt by 3 hoodlums to steal Jen’s purse in the park yesterday–we will definitely write more about this as it was quite comical

-We went on a cool free walking tour and saw Retiro and Recoleta; we also learned that if you have private health insurance here (~$120/month) you get one free plastic surgery each year. Our guide pointed out all of the artificially enhanced locals along the tour.

-It seems that Argentinians walk very quickly as we frequently get passed on the street which didn’t happen back in SF–though, this could be because Jen is always gawking at a building

-We have had some very good food and some VERY bad food so far–walking into random places off the street has not gone well for us; we will seek out recommendations going forward

-The wine is good

-Tomorrow we start spanish school and have to be across town by 8:30am–this will be very hard seeing as though we have not yet woken up before noon.

-We don’t have to go to work tomorrow, do you 🙂

More to come, and pictures!