Barrio Chino

It's true that there are lots of items from home that you cannot find in Argentina - our unbelievably full luggage on the way back from the US can attest to that - but there is one place that seems to have more variety than anywhere else in Capital: China Town.

If you're looking for something, and you have exhausted all other options, venture on over to Barrio Chino - you may just find what you're looking for.

Barrio Chino is located in Belgrano, a little area that is (at the most) 4 blocks of stores, restaurants and kiosks.  Most of the grocery stores smell pretty foul.  Most of the kiosks have cheap toys and little knick-knacks that you don't really need.  All in all, pretty much what I think of when I imagine a China Town in the US.

I will say that the prices are far better than anything I've come across in my neighborhood, and the fish quality is regarded as the best in the city.  So, when I need to stock up on seafood, Barrio Chino is worth the trip.  My favorite shop is Casa China, Arribeños 2173, which is one of the few places that is open 7 days a week (most shops are closed on Monday).  They have remodeled within the last year or so, so the place is a bit more spacious and organized than before.  I prefer it because it is one of the cleaner markets that I have seen in China Town, especially the seafood department.  Don't get me wrong, it still smells weird and there are always flies in the summer months, but the preparations areas are clean and the staff is more or less friendly.

In the seafood department, if you're buying fish, you can purchase whole fish or have them filet the fish for you.  Salmon can be ordered with or without skin, the price goes up the "cleaner" you want the fish.

Here is the guy filleting my salmon order today:

 There are also lots of other seafood options to choose from as well, many of them are things I don't recognize.  If you are an adventurous chef who cooks mussels, whole squid, clams and snails, look no further than the seafood section...

Looking for feta cheese?  They've got it.  Soy milk (sweetened or unsweetened).  They've got it.  The only place I've been able to consistently find jalapeños - Casa China.

This has also been the sole source of our supply of soy sauce, coconut milk, rice noodles, rice vinegar, sesame seed oil, brown sugar (when I'm not making it myself), bags of uncooked frozen shrimp, lots of herbs and filo dough.  They also stock items you wouldn't expect in Asian food like salsa, peanut butter, cream cheese (used in most sushi here - so this is considered an Asian dish ingredient) and nuts, that are significantly cheaper to purchase in this area of town versus closer to home.

There are a few catches, most places are cash only, the is no delivery so you can only purchase what you can carry, and items are generally imported from Asia so you need to know what you're looking for - you may not recognize the label.  It's a great place to go for some key items, or just to peruse the aisles and see what goodies you can find.

Long Live the...Milk?

This is a photo of our cupboard.  Our room-temperature cupboard that houses our cereal, crackers, oatmeal and.... milk (insert collective gasp from anyone reading this in the US).  That's right, we buy leche larga vida, or ultra-pasteurized (UHT) milk.  It is AWESOME.  It keeps (unopened) for at least 6 months, so I can buy a whole stock of it and then skip the milk purchases for the next few trips to the grocery store.  It saves space in the tiny carts they have here, space better used for things like diapers and yogurt.  Why is this not a thing in the US??  Here are some thoughts:

1) Americans are obsessed with refrigeration.  I'm not judging, I love my fridge as much as the next guy.  But think about it, we balk at other countries that don't keep their eggs in the refrigerated aisle.  We cannot imagine an apartment/house/car without air conditioning.  We laugh at the Europeans that drink room temperature beverages. We are offended if a restaurant doesn't provide ice with their water.  We like our things cold.

2) It doesn't taste good.  The first time my mom drank it while visiting us, she poured a glass of milk from the fridge, then promptly reported that the milk had gone bad.  As I pointed to the expiration date that was 5 months in the future, I thought she was going to barf.  I get it, it is not as tasty as normal milk, but I think it's been 15 years since I had a plain glass of milk so this stuff works when I add it to my coffee, make my oatmeal or cook with it.  It just can't hold it's own without something else to mask the flavor.

3) We've never tried it.  Or have we?  According to the 100% accurate website, Wikipedia, if you've had a McFlurry from McDonald's or had milk on an airplane, you've probably had UHT milk and just not realized it.  That being said, you can't just put a display of room temperature milk in the middle of a Wegman's and expect people to jump on board.

The difference is in the pasteurization method, it is pasteurized at a much higher temperature, for less time than regular milk.  This does change the taste and smell, but again, it's only noticeable for me when you're serving milk alone.

I think it's amazing.  It's doesn't take up all of the space in your fridge and you can buy in bulk without worrying about spoilage. I imagine anyone who has had a long-lasting power outage wishes that they had some standby milk to turn to.  I'd also be willing to bet that anyone with multiple children would love to have a secret stash of milk in their pantry. If you see it on your grocery shelf, give it a go, don't be afraid!

Viva la leche larga vida!

I Do It Myself

Along with this new world of mothering comes a plethora of books and information on what your child is doing, what they should be doing, what they are no longer doing and, finally, what they will do.  One of the phases in our near future is the inevitable "I do it myself!" phase, in which your child wants to take control, assert leadership, and do simple tasks like eating and getting dressed for themselves.  Thankfully, in babies this phase is not in our immediate future, but the "I do it myself" phase seems to resurface in adults. 
Specifically in adults that are around 30 and living abroad. 
More specifically, in me. 

Exhibit 1:
Over the weekend my in-laws sent us an email request that seemed to be a bit of a last resort.  A family friend owns a coffee/espresso maker that is only sold in South America and one of their house guests inadvertently threw away the metal filter attachment needed to brew a cup of coffee.  For a coffee maker, this seems to be a pretty important part, considering that you cannot brew a cup without it.  After numerous attempts to contact the company, contact different suppliers in the US, etc, they were unable to find a place to buy this part.  Considering that we live in South America, they thought we may be able to help in locating the part. 

Let me pause to say that a year ago, I would have literally laughed at this request.  I cannot find 90% of the things I am looking for here, much less find such a specific piece of equipment.  If you would like a specific example of how maddening my searches can be, please refer to my attempt to purchase a food processor.  But that was a year ago.  This year, I'm empowered.  And I need to redeem myself after the food processor incident. 

So, after I contacted Oster Argentina, in a request sent in Spanish I might add, they responded with a local shop where I could purchase the filter.  I went there on Tuesday, and to my incredible surprise, the little ancient-looking shop at 870 Esmeralda Street had a huge inventory of Oster products, they understood what I needed, and actually had the part I was looking for.  In a matter of 48 hours I had saved the coffee maker from a lonely life of not brewing coffee. I am unabashedly proud.  I do it myself.

Exhibit 2:

You may remember from my Need For Change post that it is a bear to obtain change here in the city.  This is also the only form of payment that the buses accepted... until now.  Recently they have started a card system called SUBE, where you can add value to a card and use it to ride any bus or subway line. Jon uses the bus every day to commute to work, so I decided to look into getting him a card. It is easier than you might think, but more difficult than it should be.  Just bring an identification document (or photocopy) to any of the locations listed on the Retira tu Tarjeta site, complete a short form and leave with an empty SUBE card.  The first card is free, so is the second, but if you loose your card again there is some sort of charge. 
Unfortunately, it is currently not possible to obtain and put value on your SUBE card in the same location, so you then need to bring the card to any of the Carga tu Tarjeta site locations.  You can pay with cash or credit card, there is no service charge, and then use that value to pay for your trips.  Rumor has it that these cards will eventually be accepted in taxis as well. 
I took on this challenge.  I got each of us a card.  I waited at a Correo Argentina location only to be told that this location doesn't add value to SUBE cards.  I traveled to another location.  I charged the cards.  I do it myself. 

That's all, just two exhibits, but two tasks that gave me an enormous sense of accomplishment.  So thank you, house guest that threw away the coffee filter.  Thank you, new card system for making me figure it out.  It's things like this that make me realize how far I've come since we first moved here and we called on our Spanish speaking friends when things were complicated.  It's a week like this that makes so many of the other, more frustrating weeks worth it. 

It's a week like this that makes me proud to say, yeah, I do it myself. 

Adventures in Baby Cribs

Cribs, one of the most important pieces of furniture in your child's life.  Anyone who has purchased one of these items knows that there are all sorts of regulations, from the space between the bars to the firmness of the mattress, to the chemicals used in the paint, there are a zillion things to consider.  Knowing all of these things, we made the conscious decision to buy a bona fide Argentine crib.

This decision has been a bit more than we bargained for. 

We bought our crib on Belgrano Street at a shop called Quartos (Av Belgrano 2610, 4943-1227).  For those that don't know, Belgrano Street has blocks of furniture shops lining both sides of the street, each one just slightly different than the next.  We went store to store searching for the perfect crib, and we chose Quartos because they had both the crib we liked and the matching dresser/changing table.  This is where the frustration began. 

Hooray!  The crib is finally here!

Issue #1:  The Delivery.

We purchased our crib on November 6, 2010 with the promise of delivery within 45 days.  To be exact, the salesman, Oscar, said that he thought it would be delivered before Christmas.  Delivery actually occurred on January 17, complete with an added charge, an additional $140 pesos - a detail that was omitted from our original "grand total" bill. 


Issue #2:  The Invasion.

Three months to the day after our crib finally arrived, we realized that the delivery brought more than just furniture into our home.  The wood platform that supports the crib's mattress has termites.  Disgusting little bugs eating away at our little girl's bed.  Immediate action was required.  Luckily, we had Grammy and Papa in town to assist in the deconstruction, thorough cleaning, de-bugging and reconstruction of the crib.  We did everything we could to be sure that all of the little buggers were gone for good.  As a side note, I have called Quartos repeatedly to see if they would replace this part of the crib, each time they say that they will call me back.  I have yet to receive a call. 

Issue #3:  The Sheets.
Most cribs in Argentina are bigger than those in the US, and the style that we chose was the most popular on the market, a style that will eventually become a toddler bed.  In all of the planning that we did when shopping for a crib, we didn't consider the fact that: larger crib = larger mattress = the need for larger sheets.  We received a few adorable crib sheets from our baby shower in the US, but they were too small (both in length and width).  I shopped all over the city for sheets that would fit our crib mattress and the only ones I found that fit were extremely thin, see-through, white and cost $75 each.  Fortunately for us, our incredible cleaning lady, Candy, is a whiz with a sewing machine and has added material to our US crib sheets to create this adorable result.  I have no idea how she did it, but they fit perfectly and look adorable. 

Whew!  That was a lot of problem solving for one little piece of furniture.  We are still hopeful for a long life from the crib, but we will certainly take more care in thinking through our future furniture purchases.

The China Rose

Today I met a friend for lunch and a very fruitful shopping trip in Barrio Chino, the perfect outing for a hazy Tuesday afternoon. Barrio Chino, or Chinatown, in Buenos Aires is pretty small version of the Chinatown you may be used to in other big cities. It's 2 square blocks to be exact. This mini-barrio is located in Belgrano, right next to the Belgrano train station, and there are treasures to be discovered all over the place. There are little trinket shops all over the place, most of which are filled with cheap, Chinese-imported plastic junk; little waving cats or plastic beads, but sometimes they have hidden treasures.
I originally saw this style of tea cup at Sirop Folie, a cool little tea room across the way from Sirop the restaurant (which was also really liked). I loved that the mugs are perfect for loose leaf tea and then you can balance the leaf strainer on the mug lid - genius! I was really excited to find them available for purchase, not to mention the adorable patterns, blue and yellow, just like our kitchen, and blue and white, which my Grandmother once told me was timeless. There are plenty of other ceramic patterns as well, I thought they were a good mix of practical and gimmicky. Now I just need to buy some loose leaf tea. Moving on.

We stopped at China Rose - Mendoza 1689, Barrio Chino - for lunch, and it was surprisingly good. The restaurant is clean, nicely furnished and (very importantly for the 2 pregnant ladies) has really nice bathrooms. I've been to China Rose once before and it was good then too, so it seemed an appropriate place to go for a second visit. I am no expert, but the items I've had here were tasty, non-greasy and straightforward, basically, everything that I'm looking for when I order Chinese.

They offer a fixed price menu for lunch, either $28 or $32 pesos which gets you a drink, appetizer, entree and dessert or coffee. The entree items to choose from are pretty standard, rice or noodle dishes on the $28 peso list - chow mien, fried rice, etc and $32 pesos gets you a meat based dish - pineapple chicken, broccoli chicken and such. As an appetizer, we each ordered the veggie spring rolls which, hilariously, came on a plain white plate. No garnish, no sauce, just rolls. In fairness, there are sauces available on your table, it just looks funny having the spring rolls loose and moving all around your plate.

I ordered the chicken fried rice as my main dish, which is maybe my favorite item on any Chinese food menu and it didn't disappoint. My friend had the pineapple chicken, which was good but would have been better if it had come with a side of rice.

The coffee at the end of the meal was by far the worst thing I had, it was so bitter I couldn't stomach it. All in all it was a good meal and I'm happy to have a standard lunch spot for my China town adventures.

After lunch we went to the grocery store two doors down, the Oriental Asia Market, and picked up some cooking goodies, including quite a few seafood items. Bs.As. is not known for it's seafood, but if your looking for ingredients, Barrio Chino is known as the best place in town to purchase fish and other seafood items for a reasonable price. A word of warning, be ready for the smell, the markets have lots of open air seafood departments which make for a pretty smelly shopping experience.

The Bed of Gold

On Tuesday one of the most anticipated events in our Argentinean lives occurred.  The Bed arrived. 

It all started in February when I decided we needed to buy bed frames for the guest beds in our apartment.  I fell in love with this antiquey-style bed made out of window shutters at this store in Palermo called The Bed Shop, Godoy Cruz 2161, only to realize that I didn't possess enough Spanish knowledge to be confident in my bed purchasing skills.

After months of deliberation, I couldn't get the bed out of my mind.  Jon gave me the go-ahead so during my brother Chris's visit I dragged him with me to The Bed Shop and I bought the bed.  All in Spanish.  It was slightly more expensive than I had hoped, but it was the wonder bed of all beds, and I had been thinking about it for many months, so it was alright, right?  Well, it was, until late August when said "wonder bed" was to be delivered and I realized the very small but extremely significant detail that changed everything.  Throughout my brilliant Spanish correspondence with The Bed Shop we had interchangeably used the words "cama" (translation: Bed, clearly a necessary word) and "respaldo" which, in every place I looked to translate it meant "support" (strange, but a bed has supports, so I didn't really think anything of it).  I came to realize later that this word also means "headboard".  Which also means that I had ordered exactly 1/4 of the bed I thought I had ordered.  Yikes.  A most humbling and expensive mistake. 

Many emails and frustrated phone calls later, we agreed to have the other 3/4 of the bed made, for an additional price, obviously.  And many weeks later, Tuesday to be exact, the amazing bed-of-gold arrived.  Isn't she a beauty?

Look at how she glows in the light.  Perfectly matching the light blue hue of the room.

Check out the shutters!  Real shutters!  Making the beautiful respaldo I had been dreaming of.

The spindles!  Look at the spindles! 

Was it worth the wait, the stress, the price?  I'll never tell.  Just know that if you visit us and sleep in this bed, you might as well be sleeping in a bed of gold.

This will be my last transaction with The Bed Shop.  They were very nice people, very nicely telling me that I owed them more money and that it was going to be an additional few weeks until the bed was delivered.  Also, I know there was more than one misunderstanding in this transaction, and it made for a miserable buying experience.

Let's see the bed once more for good measure.  In a different light this time.  Just drink it in.

Quinta Fresca

So the last grocery delivery site in my little experiment is Quinta Fresca, which in contrast, is not a stand alone store but a delivery-only shop.  This little operation is by far the most advanced website of the three that I tried.  Some of the features include:

• Shopping guides.  Input the number of people you are shopping for and the website generates approximately how much of each item needed for a week.  You can then alter the items recommended before adding to your cart.
• Information regarding the products.  When you mouse over each item a window pops up with information such as where the item originates, the current quality, how to store it, how long it will keep after delivery, etc.  
• Price information.  Each product lists if the current price is above or below average for the item.
• Quality.  The site lists outright if the product is not recommended due to low quality.  This is much better than receiving crappy veggies!

They are a small shop, but offer fruits, vegetables, meats. wines, pastas, fresh flowers and fresh herbs.  This isn't the place where you'll do all of your shopping, but it's like having a farmer's market that delivers.

Overall 5 out of 5 stars.
It's not fair to compare Quinta Fresca to the rest of the stores that I ordered from, they aren't of the same weight-class.  For what it is, Quinta Fresca does a bang up job.  Great customer service, prompt delivery times, and really quality products.  They are close to being a once a week order for us, but they're quality is unparalleled.  Jon noticed that this was the first time since we moved that we had vegetables as clean as we did in the US, normally we have to take the scrubber to them for at least a minute or two.  That's worth it, if nothing else. 

Jumbo Online Delivery

After my experience with Disco's Online Delivery I decided to try my luck with Jumbo, my other grocery shopping go-to.  My hope was that I could use Disco and Jumbo delivery the same way I use them for "live" shopping, Disco for once-a-week stuff and Jumbo for the big monthly shop.  This turned out to be possible, but not quite as perfect as I had imagined.

To start off, the main Jumbo website has a link to register for their home delivery - every time I attempted to sign up using this link I would end up on a "site maintenance, try again later" style screen.  I tried a number of times over the course of 2 weeks before I stumbled upon the other Jumbo site, Jumbo a Casa, which was where I successfully signed up for their delivery service. 

After sign up, the Jumbo site was almost identical to the Disco site, they seem to be owned/operated by the same company.  Jumbo offers the same delivery windows, the same user functionality and the same features such as "compras express" which will save your previous orders for easy retrieval.  Jumbo has a much larger selection of items like cleaning products, imported items and paper products making the online delivery option even more appealing.

Overall 3 out of 5 stars.
Everything I liked about the Disco ordering system applies for Jumbo, as the websites are virtually identical.  In addition, the Jumbo selection makes it slightly more appealing - they have just about double the items that Disco offers.
Here are the reasons the Jumbo rates lower than Disco on my highly technical star rating system:

1. Jumbo was out of at least 10 of the items that I ordered - granted they called to inform me of this, but some of their substitute items were really different than what I had originally requested.  For example, I ordered some filet mignon and they substituted something they called "roast beef' that was fatty, thin and nothing at all like filet. 
2. When I ordered 100 count tissues, they gave me 60 count mini-tissue travel packs.  I'm sorry, what?!  Why can I not order normal tissues online??  After my Disco tissue issues, this might be an in-store only item for me, I can't give Jon more reasons to mock my tissue ordering skills.  Good thing it's allergy season and we actually might go through a zillion mini tissue packs in a reasonable amount of time.  
3. My expectations were higher.  Due to store size and number of items available I thought Jumbo would surpass Disco in the delivery department.  This really wasn't the case.  Out of the three stores I have ordered from, Jumbo was the least impressive. 

The other thing to consider when ordering from Jumbo is that they may not deliver to your door.  I've heard that they have some sort of store policy that prohibits them from entering any sort of multi-apartment communities, which a lot of people live in here in the city.  We have not had this issue, but certainly something to keep in mind.  In general, I will probably stick with Disco when ordering large amounts online, but it is nice to have a backup plan in Jumbo.  

Disco Online Delivery

My first soiree into online grocery ordering was with my most frequented supermercado, Disco. They have a pretty advanced website, Discovirtual, although the site is in Spanish so it took me a little longer to navigate. Here are some bullet points on how to order:

• Before your first online order, you need to register as a user either with your DNI (Argentine national identity number that we haven't received yet) or your passport number and a password. This is when you store personal information such as your address, phone number and any sort of additional information that helps with the delivery.
• After registry is complete, click on "Ingresar a Comprar" to begin shopping.
• Start by choosing a delivery date and time, the time slots are available in 3 hour windows.
• Proceed to the "store" part of the site. Items are divided into categories like cleaning, beverages or meats.
• Once you find an item to purchase, indicate the number of items you want and click on the cart. **I like that your cart is always visible on the right-hand side of the screen. You can see all of the items you have added and the total cost of your order at all times.
• If you click on an item, a pop-up window appears with additional product information. This includes the option of choosing a back-up item in case the product you choose is out of stock.
• After the order is complete, click on "ir a la caja". This will direct you to a payment screen - you can choose credit, debit or cash.

Overall, four out of five stars.
The Disco ordering system was quite good. I really like the automatic substitution option and the website is clear and easy to use. The best feature is the "Compras Express" which saves items purchased in previous orders in an easily accessed list, thus saving you the time of searching for some of your regular items each time you buy. There were a couple of improvements that would give it that additional star:

1. Some products are missing photographs, and this really dampens my day. I somehow bought 6 packs of "Disney's Cars" themed tiny tissue boxes in place of the normal adult Kleenex tissues that I was expecting. Jon ridiculed me for at least a few days. They were pretty funny to have around the house.
2. Disco is a bit smaller than some of the other supermercados so not all items are available in their stores, and even fewer items are available through their website. Using their delivery option almost guarantees that I need to make a small store run the following day for random items.
3. It would be nice to offer a guide to purchasing items online, products purchased in weight are difficult to estimate. For example, I have no idea how many kilos of eggplant I need. My guess of .5 kilos landed me with 7 eggplant, and Jon doesn't even really like them.

These are all minor points in an overall great experience. I plan on using this service often, especially for the major shopping that I do about once a month.

Online Grocery Shopping

The grocery stores in Bs.As. and I have a true love/hate relationship. On one hand, I love that I can find most everything I need at the larger grocery stores - but I hate just about everything else about the store itself. I guess I'm not really sure how they feel about me.

In our first 6 months living here I spend an embarrassing amount of time at the store. After my first attempt at grocery delivery was a complete disaster I was nervous to try it again, so I would buy only what I could carry and then laboriously lug my purchases the 4 blocks home in the summer heat. Not a good plan.

I graduated to using what I lovingly call my granny-cart. This incredible little device used to be the butt of my jokes, but now I have eaten my words and it has become my BFF. This cart, combined with Envirosax, great reusable bags given to me by my mother-in-law, made my life much easier.

Even armed with my trusty granny-cart I have to make multiple trips to the store when I do our "big" grocery shopping of the month, which brings another issue to light. The stores themselves take FOREVER to get through. Things that are different in Argentina that cause some of the delays:

• Everyone has to weigh their produce at a specified produce weigh station. This station generally has a long line, a slow worker and, at times, no worker at all - leaving you to search for someone who has the qualifications to weigh your fruit. This also creates a second line-waiting situation in the store, which is never good for the quick in-and-out.
• There are quite a few checkout lanes, but they are very rarely fully staffed. Even when the checkout lanes are staffed, there are not enough packers for the "delivery" lanes so the lanes wait for the packers to become available.
• The cashiers keep a ridiculously small amount of change in their till, (see The Need for Change for more of my issues with small bills in Bs.As.) so when they are given a bill or coin that they can't break, they yell "cambio!" and wait for a manager to come by and give them change. This results in 6 or 7 cashiers yelling "cambio!" with one manager on call to dole out the money.
• The culture is extremely friendly and everyone kisses hello and goodbye when they arrive/leave places. This includes coming and going from work. Heaven forbid you happen to be in line during a shift change and you may see, no exaggeration, 10 people walk around to kiss hello or goodbye to literally every person working at the store. This actually causes a significant amount of delay.

All of these factors combined have given me reason to venture into the world of delivery again. I started out shopping in the stores and having the items delivered at the checkout line. This is a good option, however delivery can take anywhere from 1 - 5 hours after checking out, so my entire day would be spent shopping, waiting and receiving groceries.

Then I heard about online grocery delivery.

You can shop, purchase, arrange for delivery and pay all without leaving home. It's been the best time saver! I'll write future posts about specific stores, websites and options that are most useful - but in general, this is my greatest discovery yet. There are items that I have not been able to find online, but that's where my granny cart and Envirosax come back into play, and I only have to visit the store for small items in between larger delivery orders. Which is great, I hate waiting in the checkout disaster pictured on the left every other day.

Rancho Room

Bachelor Jon had a typical bachelor-style bed, with just a metal stand, a box spring and a mattress, and on the list of furniture purchases, a bed frame was pretty low on the priority list. Now that Jon's old bed serves as a guest room bed we thought it was time to invest in some actual furniture for the room.

We've been to Tigre a few times and have really liked the style of furniture that we've seen at the weekend Mercado de las Fruitas. I'm not totally sure why its called the Fruit Market, because all sorts of non-fruit related items are for sale, but it is a great market that is held every Saturday and Sunday in Tigre. We were most interested in the furniture sections of this market, which has a mostly unprocessed or "crudo" style.

After looking all over we found a bed we loved - and looks perfect in what I like to call the Southwestern Room:

We also got the alpaca skin rug next to the bed at the Fruit Market. This helps accomplish our cold-hardwood-floor issue.

I love the look of this bed. It's modeled after a fence gate and I don't remember seeing anything like it.

The design is so simple but the bed is sturdy, interesting and (the best part) it was pretty inexpensive. We ordered the bed from a shop called "El Buen Pino" located at Sarmiento 270, and spoke to the guy who was actually going to be making it. We chose the stain and size, and we had some options with the height. I have their card around here somewhere, when I find it I'll update the post, they were great to work with. The only item we plan to change is the chain used for the headboard looks a little sold-by-the-foot-at-Home-Depot and we would prefer something a little more, I don't know, authentic.

Hooray for new bed!

Casa Gill

There have been some sweeping changes to Casa Gill lately with more on the way.  We have the luxury of a great, large apartment here in Buenos Aires, although there are a few items that need attention.  The challenges of the apartment as far as I see it are as follows:  1) We moved from a much smaller place in DC and now are trying to fill up our apartment with furniture, 2) Our new place is filled with all wood floors and we own one small carpet, 3) We have extremely tall (maybe 15 feet) ceilings.  All of these things combined means that our apartment is large, semi-empty and every sound echos. 

Our first project, the great room:

This is a huge living room/dining room combo with elaborate chandeliers a functional marble fireplace and on the wall not shown in this photo, a complete set of built in bookshelves.  Not bad for a starting block.   We have focused mostly on the "dining" part of the room.

The hutch in the upper right-hand side and the horseshoe wine rack on the left-hand side were our first furniture purchases here.  Belgrano Street in the Centro neighborhood is knows for it multiple blocks of furniture shops and we found a gem in there called Rincon de Campo, Belgrano 2459, which is where we bought both pieces.  All furniture items are made by hand and they sell quite a few "one of a kind" unique pieces like the wine rack.  I love the rustic look to the piece and then to use horseshoes to hold the bottles in place is genius.  The hutch is handmade but we've seen other very similar items in the same store.  The display case is great and it serves as extra storage for serving dishes as well as a place to store our Spanish books (of which we have many). 

The next item, in my opinion, is the hardest item to choose for a household, a rug.  Standing in the Bazhars showroom in the Buenos Aires Design Centre trying to imagine what the rug will look like in our place made Jon and I both virtually crazy.  I think we did a pretty good job, as The Dude would say, it really ties the room together.

The most recent addition to this room is that ficas tree in the corner.  A friend has recently moved back to the US and needed a home for four trees, and I was more than happy to take them off of her hands.  Aside from the drama getting them to our house and the dead worms that we found near the pots afterward (apparently they were outdoor plants...) they have been a nice addition to the space.

Next up, our new guest room bed! 

Recoleta Market

Buenos Aires is known for its outdoor fairs and markets, and the weekend really brings these markets to life. Recoleta has a great outdoor artisan market called Plaza Francia that runs each weekend, most commonly referred to as the "Hippie Fair". The early vendors start setting up on Friday afternoons between 3:00 and 4:00pm but the main event is really on Saturday and Sundays from around 1:00pm until 7:30pm or so, depending on how long it stays light outside. Vendors set up all around the Recoleta Cemetery (approximately at Av. Alvear and Posadas) selling everything from jewelry to clothing to musical instruments all for extremely reasonable prices. Later in the afternoon there are acts that set up live entertainment, during daylight hours this will be some sort of acrobatic or slapstick comedy act and at night there will be a live band. This may be my favorite of the outdoor markets that we've been to because it's huge and there is a large variety of items to choose from. I am slightly biased since we live so close to it, we can walk there any weekend we want. Everyone that we have brought to this fair has had good luck when it comes to finding gifts or souvenirs for themselves. Here are some of my favorite finds:

• Turquoise necklace and earring set - I bought this set a few weeks ago on a Friday afternoon when the vendors were just getting set up. I really liked the set, but the necklace was really long at first so the woman who makes them shortened it for me while I stood there and waited. The vendor I went to gave me the English equivalent of the "early bird special" which included $20pesos off of the price. All in all I walked away with this beautiful set for around US$25.

• Wood flower and mirror key holder - This was one of our first purchases when we discovered this market. The woman who sells these has all sorts of coat racks and key holders with and without mirrors. I really like the inlaid flowers and leaves and it looks great in our front hallway. We have some crazy dungeon-master keys to get into our apartment so this is really handy for keeping them straight. The only downside is that you have to use two huge screws to get it into the wall, and our walls are different than normal drywall, they tend to crumble when you nail or screw anything into them. We had a large pile of wall on our floors after we were satisfied that the mirror was secure.
  

• Green and Blue pendant - This necklace was a gift from my mom when she was here visiting and I love it! It combines my two favorite jewelry colors and has a beautiful silver setting. The man who owns this jewelry stand had so many nice things, we loved almost everything that he made. Technically, this was purchased at the San Telmo market because we couldn't make up our minds when we first say the stand in Recoleta. We wanted to get back to his stand, but forgot to get back to him so we followed him to San Telmo, where he said that he works on Sundays. He was set up at the corner of Defensa and Mexico Streets and we basically cleaned him out when we found his Sunday stand.
  

Typically, there is not a whole lot of negotiating room in the prices, different than my experience in Mexico or the Caribbean. The exception is when you purchase more than one item from the same seller, there is more room to haggle at that point. I have noticed that the prices do change from week to week, so if you are interested in something - buy it when you're there.

San Telmo

San Telmo is the oldest barrio in Bs. As., alive with culture and music and, of course, tango. During the week, it is home to antique shops, art galleries and plenty of cafes; but the weekend holds the real time to visit San Telmo. Each weekend, mostly on Sundays, the cobblestone streets transform into an enormous outdoor market filled with antiques, crafts and artisan items. San Telmo is just a short cab ride from where we live, so it is an easy destination for an afternoon trip. While my mom was in town, I reserved our Sunday to visit the San Telmo market.

The main street in San Telmo is Defensa Street, famous for the street fight between the porteños (Buenos Aires natives) and the British where the porteños put together an impromptu militia and sent the British back to their awaiting ships. This is seen as the first main step in gaining their independence from Spain a few years later. San Telmo is also recognized as one of the potential birthplaces of the Argentine Tango. There are a few other barrios that make this claim, so it depends on who you talk to as to where the actual birthplace was. The weekend market spans countless blocks down Defensa Street, but it seems to begin at Plaza Dorrego. In the Plaza itself, you'll find a higher concentration of antique booths, and the further you walk down Defensa, the more jewelry, mate paraphernalia and clothing booths appear.

We were only a few steps out of the taxi when we ran into this cool tango band complete with three accordians. Throughout our visit to the market, there were countless bands, Spanish guitar players and tango stages set up for open air shows. There are plenty of unique items including horse accessories; stirrups, bits and decorations made out of horseshoes, old time seltzer bottles and lots of copper spoons, jugs and buckets. Additionally, there are plenty of really great finds just waiting to be purchased from the artisan stalls in the market - like this cool "Welcome" sign that I bought.

Tigre

Tigre is an area approximately 17 miles north of Buenos Aires located on the Parana Delta. According to my guidebook, it is a "great jumping off point for river trips into the delta, comprising of 6,500 miles of canals, rivers and marshes". We have not explored the 6,500 miles yet, but it is a great place to go to get away from the bustling of the city. People flock to Tigre on the weekends with picnic lunches and Mate (ma-TAY, the tea that is a national obsession here) or you can take boat tours of the delta lasting anywhere from 45 minutes to 8 hours. There are restaurants and cafes lining the shore and both the Tren de la Costa and the local commuter train stop right next to the dock.



I have been there twice now, the first time was an experiment with my friend Lauren who came to Argentina to travel for a few months. We took the commuter train which is by far the cheapest way to get there ($2.70 pesos round trip), albeit a much longer trip. A side note about the commuter train, I don't mind the it, but I have heard some horror stories regarding safety (similar to any stories that you hear about trains in large cities) and you have to be willing to put up with people begging for money/trying to sell you things. As Jon pointed out, it's similar to a train in Europe where people do the same thing. Back to my trip with Lauren, the only information that we had was a short paragraph in her guidebook, so we were relying on our instincts to make it through the day. We easily found the boat dock and decided to follow her guidebook's advice and chose the boat taxi instead of going on a tour. What we didn't realize was that it was literally a taxi boat, more intended for the locals who live in the delta and need to come to town to grocery shop, etc. This is a cool concept for people living or renting houses on the delta because they must take a boat to get back to town, it's like living on an island. For us, this meant that the boat stop 150 times by the time we wanted to get off. We stopped at an area called "Tres Bocas" where we were told there would be shopping and restaurants. We found 2 restaurants that were completely deserted and absolutely ZERO shops. What the guidebook did not mention was that the delta is a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes, and they were feasting on us. So we tried to leave Tres Bocas after about 20 minutes of walking around and could not figure out how to get back on the taxi boat. Three taxis passed us by as we waited...and with my limited knowledge of Spanish, I had no idea why they wouldn't let us on. We found some local folks that looked to be waiting to get back to the town and I asked them if we were waiting in the right spot. (I imagine that I sounded a little like this, "We want boat. We need boat for Tigre. You need boat for Tigre too?" Thank goodness for patient locals.) We made it back to town and had a great lunch that included a pitcher of delicious sangria. We had a great (though mildly hilarious) day.

For my guided trip, our friend Juan drove Jon and I to town and promised to show us the best places to go for shopping and eating in Tigre. It was raining a little so we stopped for lunch as soon as we arrived. We went to this great place called Maria del Lujan that had a great menu with lots of choices from steak to Italian to sandwiches. We each got some sort of pasta dish, I got the tri-colored ravioli with Roquefort sauce, it was delicious. Afterward, we went to Puerto de Frutos, the port in Tigre. This area has a zillion places to buy furniture, art, clothing, crafts, home decor, etc. Intermixed with the crafts are fresh fruit and flower stands, complete with lots of potted herb plants. The style all was pretty similar, handmade wood and iron rustic looking items, just my taste. I could have spent all day here. Jon and I found this great painting that is now hanging in our front hallway (pictured below), and I plan to return sometime soon (I think Jon will be happy to pass on a second shopping trip) for a few other pieces that we saw.