Ano Nuevo en Buenos Aires

I'm back in Chicago now but I want to blog about the rest of my Argentina trip before I forget.

New Years in Buenos Aires is not at all like any of us expected. Tradition there is for people to have house parties with friends and with family. Everything is closed except for a few restaurants to cater to us tourists who expected a bigger new years celebration. We ended up at a restaurant in Palermo Hollywood, joined by some of Brian's fellow Haas students. The wine kept flowing and we lost track of time. Pretty soon they were pouring us champagne and people were toasting to the new year. We looked at our watches and were thinking... "but we have 2 more minutes"? Our watches were off. Fireworks began outside and confused, we greeted each other with a happy new year. Then we returned to dinner. Dinner ended around 2am, with Jeff and Rosiella throwing up from the bottomless wine. Happy new year.

New Years Day was equally dead so we ended up walking around the city to see if one of the museums might be open. Nope. We were about to entertain ourselves with a made-up scavenger hunt around the city when we stumbled across a street market that was teeming with people. Eureka!

One of the post-new years days we took a boat to Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay. We had VIP seats on the barco and they served us champagne upon boarding. Pretty classy stuff. In Uruguay, we had the best meal of the trip -- Chivito. Chivito is traditionally a sandwich but we had it sans bread. It includes: Steak topped with cheese, fried egg, bacon, lettuce, tomato and a side of fries. Damn delicious. And when paired with local beer and sangria. Amazing. After our coma-inducing meal, we wandered the towns endearing and romantic cobblestone streets and cute little museums. We ended our trip at a small cafe where Jeff partook his favorite South American hobby, Mate.

Mate is a looseleaf tea that's drunk out of a special cup and straw. You see people carrying it around everywhere. It almost looks like you're smoking some MJ, which is why Jeff likes it so much. I didn't get a chance to taste it since I didn't want to share my germs with everyone, but I did bring some home so... Mate party at my house!

We had two notable dinners in the following evenings:
1) Resto: The executive chef was trained under Ferran Adria (from El Bulli fame) so we were curious about the food. I was feeling ill so I couldn't eat much but I do remember how good of a deal it was. 5 course meal for ~$50! It was definitely the most westernized meal we had. If I could yelp it though, it would probably only have a 3 since none of the dishes met our high expectations.
2) An Underground Restaurant: (Not literally underground) We found out about this place by word-of-mouth and is run out of a local couple's home. You make a reservation and they give you the address to their home. They only serve 12 people per night so our party of 6 took up most of their little courtyard dining area. Diego was the chef and had lived in SF where he worked at various restaurants around the city. It was a delicious meal full of local ingredients. The whole set up was a mirror image of what Jeff has dreamt of starting. I think Jeff wanted to have Diego's baby.

The rest of our Buenos Aires days has already become a bit of a blur. We ran out of things to do and ended up sleeping in til noon and staying up until 2-3am, sometimes just playing a rowdy game of drunken pusoy. (At least we finished all the liquor we bought.) Oh, and eating Jeff's culinary concoctions.

I finally got well when the trip was over. Lame. At least I learned how to say decongestant in Spanish. (It's decongestivo.)

Now I'm back in Chicago and procrastinating. I should be reading for my classes, writing cover letters and prepping for interviews. Recruiting hell is about to begin and I'm in denial. My mind is still somewhere in our Buenos Aires apartment.