Buenos Aires (Day 2): Navigating the Palermo Minefields

We're staying in the barrio [neighborhood] called Palermo, an up-and-coming area of Buenos Aires reminiscent of Union Street in SF or Soho in NYC. The neighborhood is filled with fancy and unique designer boutiques, trendy restaurants, and hipster hangouts. Anna and Damon or Chandan would feel right at home here. It's a cool place to see and be seen.

However, there are dangers abound in this seemingly safe neighborhood. Minefields. Not the kind that explodes from the ground and blows you to pieces, but the kind that explodes from a dog's ass and often comes in pieces. Yeah, there's dog turd all over the place... not only are there whole logs, but there's hella stepped-on poop, smudged and spread out like chunks of peanut butter on toast... a product of an unfortunate causality of inattentive walking. One needs to carefully navigate these Palermo minefields, or as the wifey likes to call it, Do the Palermo Hop... cuz we're constantly hopping and dodging dog-logs like a couple of crazy ballerinas. Argentina is famous for the Tango. Tango? Pssht... try doing the Palermo Hop at night! The crappy thing is (no pun intended) that I'm probably gonna step on some before this day is up. Awesome factor: -3.

Snackie discovery! Like Christopher Columbus, we discovered a local snackie cake called an empasada. It's basically like a Hot Pocket but 10 times better, our favorite being the beef, eggs, and spices baked into a flaky crust. The guy at the local bakery was a nice fella who seemed rather amused at my pseudo-Spanish of "Dos of that one, por favor." Hey, for three pesos (less than a dollar), it's a steal... and I'm perfectly willing to humiliate myself all over again for another one.

Random Stuff:

• So we're having dinner at this pizza joint called Chiara. BTW, the pizza here is hella good, rivaling that of Italy. The fugazetta is delicious. Anyhoo, there's a huge party there with a nun and and like 50 teenagers (I know, sounds like a bad joke... a nun and a bunch of kids walk into an Argentine pizza joint...). They all have their eyes locked on the restaurant's TV. They're watching some American Idol-like show and they're cheering loudly when it starts. Wow, hardcore fans, I'm thinking. Then suddenly, the nun that's sitting at the end of the table appears on TV and she's singing some song! Everyone's cheering in Spanish and the place goes wild. I guess they were all in the studio audience and had come here to watch the show. Hella random ass shit.
  
• I love the radio station here. 103.2FM. Hella obscure 80's songs that I haven't heard since the 5th grade. I wish they had this at home.
  
• Shopping at an Argentine supermarket called Coto for groceries and supplies. I love seeing all the different brands of stuff.

A Word From the Wifey:

Hola Amigos y Familia!
Whoa, me thinkas me speako Espanol, but me Espanol is as bueno as me Mandarino. The only Spanish I know I learned from the song Mentirosa by Mellow Man Ace. But unless I want to call someone a liar or a Skeeza, then it's not really much use.

We arrived in Buenos Aires yesterday, and the only thing that's put a hamper on our delirious happiness is the fact that we didn't have electricity in the apartment until about 8 hours after we arrived, we didn't get our phone working until a couple of hours ago, and we still don't have internet yet. The apartment owner had promised to fix all this stuff yesterday - what a mentirosa!!!

Buenos Aires is a big city with a lot of different neighborhoods called barrios. We are staying in the barrio of Palermo which has a lot of cute restaurants and shops. There are also a lot of dog lovers who live in this hood, but apparently none of them are dog-poop-picking-up lovers, so there's dog crap all over. The hubby and I have almost stepped onto dog poop so many times, only to avoid/jump over it at the last moment. We coined the term "Palermo Hop" to describe this little move.

Here are some of my observations of Buenos Aires so far:

• No one uses Kleenex here, we were looking for a box at the supermarket and it was crazy expensive (probably because they only sell 2 boxes a year).
  
• People don't clean up after their dogs.
  
• There are very few Asians here, and they all own little grocery stores.
  
• Portions are HUGE. The hubby and I shared a steak and they gave us 2 giant pieces that we couldn't finish.
  
• People eat dinner really late here. We walked into an empty restaurant at 8:45pm, and it was full by 10:00pm.
  
• The dulce de leche here is out of this world.
  
• The pizza here is pretty darn good too - apparently there are a lot of Italian immigrants here.
  
• The damn bugs here like to bite me as much as they do in Asia.
  
• Argentines don't recycle.
  
• People don't give a flying squirrel about fire hazards here. Our apartment door requires a key to open from the inside (great for security, terrible in case of fire.) We've been too nervous to start the fireplace because of this.
  
• There are these awesome outdoor shutters that we put down at night. They are great for insulation and keeps the apartment so warm.
  
• Very few people speak English here, but everyone listens to American music. So far, we've heard Curtis Blow, The Bee Gees, Culture Club, Duran Duran and Divinyls. As I'm writing this, James Taylor's Handy Man is playing on the radio.
  
• There are traffic lights at some intersections, but no pedestrian lights. So, to see if it's ok to cross, we have to make sure the opposing traffic has a red light.
  
• Both of us find that we almost say "arigato" to everyone instead of "gracias".
  
• In China, we can kinda almost understand what people are saying in Mandarin because we speak Cantonese. In Argentina, we can kinda almost understand what is in writing because we can read English. We don't exactly know which is more useful.

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