We arrived in BA on 16 January after a very quick dash down through the northwest of Argentina to meet Claire's friend Jules who has come to visit for two weeks.
We stayed our first few nights in the suburb of Palermo. Dubbed the 'yuppie' area, it's full of beautiful old buildings, hip restaurants and bars. Even better (for me), it is full of boutique shops. Such a pity I can't fit anything extra in my bag.
Steak is excellent here and I've been having plenty of it. I ate waaaaaaaaaaay too much one night at the hostel asado. The amount of meat they served us was insane. There was so much that the guy was so desperate to get rid of it by the end (he still had half a cow left), that even when you refused more he would dump a slab on your plate and say 'one more little bit, you can fit it.' So a Monty Python 'one more little morsel' moment. I thought I was going to explode, but it was so tasty that I couldn't refuse.
The Colourful Caminito of La Boca
We have had an ongoing problem with ordering drinks here. Restaurants and bars seem to be really short stocked on ingredients, fresh fruit in particular, which is bazaar considering the number of fruit markets we walk past everyday. One night we tried to order daiquiris - no strawberry. OK, how about banana. Nope. OK, let's try our luck with another drink, how about a caipirinha. Two minutes later - sorry, no lime. What do you have?!!? At another place they convinced us that a caipirinha would taste the same with lemon. It doesn't. And they forgot the sugar. Wouldn't recommend that one. A few days later we sat down in a café for lunch after exploring La Boca and it's colourful Caminito - we were told that there was no potato (so no fries), no beef and no something or other else. We sure can pick them.
Mmmmmm..... steeeeaaaaak
On the upside, after moving to San Telmo on the other side of town - the home of tango and cobbled streets - we went to Desnivel for dinner where I had an amazing steak accompanied with 'chimichurri', an Argentine marinade made up of chili, Spanish onion, saffron, thyme, parsley, garlic and lemon juice (I'm sure there is a secret ingredient in there somewhere as well). Delicious!!! Demolished that one off. However, I really need to learn how to say ' medium rare' or 'rare' even cause I haven't had a steak cooked quite how I like it yet. 
We spent an entire day wandering around the Sunday Antiques fair of San Telmo, the Buenos Aires version of Portobello Rd (mum and Aunty Wendy, you would go nuts here!). Everything and anything a chap can unload can definitely be found here - old watches, crockery, spoons, jewellery, and Australian power converters (woo hoo cause that's among the many things that has mysteriously disappeared on this trip) accompanied by live tango on the streets. You really can get caught up in the atmosphere here. By the time we looked at a watch it was 6pm and we had arrived about 11 that morning. A really good days wandering.
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