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!

Tigre & Mi Hermano

Back in January I wrote about my first trips to Tigre, a small town north of Buenos Aires. I haven't been back to Tigre since the summer so when my brother came to Buenos Aires we decided to give Tigre a wintertime visit. This time around I was prepared with some specific recommendations from friends, so we had more direction than during my first visit.

Chris and I took the Mitre Train from Retiro to Tigre, a roundtrip that costs a mere $2.70 pesos (US$0.68). The train is easy, though it's not exactly a quick trip. We were only 2 stops (out of 15 or so) into our trip when the train was inexplicably halted for 25 minutes. This made our trip a total of 1 hour 15 minutes, which would not have been a big deal if the train wasn't completely packed the entire way. It was insane, the train was 100% full in the middle of a workday. This did help cut down on the number of entrepreneurs looking to sell items or provide musical entertainment for cash during the ride. Once we actually got to Tigre, things started really going our way.

Me and Chris with a self-pic

Me, insanely overdressed for the day

I was told that you cannot go to Tigre without visiting the Gato Blanco Restaurant, and since I had already done just that 2 other times, I figured it was time to actually make it to the recommended location. Tigre is a delta, so boat rides are a main attraction. Chris and I walked over to the main dock (port? I don't know what it should be called, the place where boats dock) and found the Gato Blanco information office, which is a really nice term for the phone booth that a receptionist operates out of. I was expecting information how to get to the restaurant, only to find out that it is accessible by boat only and you need tickets both for the restaurant and for the boat. Where do you buy the tickets? The phone booth. When is the next boat leaving? Um, that would be in 2 minutes...so Chris and I hurried to pay the $60 pesos (for two tickets), jumped aboard the taxi/commuter boat and were on our way.

The commuter boat is really interesting, something that I discovered with Lauren back in January. The main difference we found in June was that the boat was virtually empty, meaning less stops, which was just fine with us. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the ride was nice and relaxing. We rode for 25 minutes or so and got off right at the dock of Gato Blanco.

Gato Blanco is right on the water's edge and has a large dock that has tables literally on top of the water. It was virtually empty when we arrived, there was only one other table filled on the dock, and ironically, they were from the US. The menu had a little bit of everything on it, although it seemed to be geared a little more toward dinner than lunch. We both decided on stuffed pasta, and both dishes were delicious. Our waiter came by at the end of our meal with some lemon-cello, which is not my favorite but Chris was loving it. He drank his first glass so quickly that I had to laugh, and the waiter had to fill him up again. The commuter boat stops at the dock every hour on the hour to bring you back to town, so we had just enough time for a relaxed lunch and then we could catch the return trip. It was a great meal, and the train/boat adventure to get there alone is worth the trip. I think I can speak for both of us when I say that it was a great day trip.

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.