Dog Sitting

That's right. Dog sitting. A real dog. For a week. I can almost hear the combined gasps, then laughter, from everyone that knows Jon. For those that don't, my husband is not what you would call a "dog person". Nor is he someone that you would call a "pet person". He is into low maintenance items in our house, it is even a struggle sometimes to get him to agree to plants. So when our friends were headed to a tropical vacation in Brazil and called us a couple nights before they were going to fly out to see if we could watch the pup, I was as shocked as you are that Jon agreed. Even though I insist that at some point in our lives we will have a dog, I concede that it is really hard to have a dog in an apartment. I have actually underestimated how difficult this is. We live on the 4th floor of our building and across a 6 lane road from a park, so it is quite a production to take a dog out for a walk.

In comes Katie, a 3-year old tiny little poodle-type dog, to live with us for a week. She is a pleasant little pup that is content to hang out with you all day. She does a good job of telling you when she needs to go out and is easy to walk once she's outside. Her likes: food, the couch, walks, barking, Sham-Wow (for some reason she loves to lay on a folded Sham-Wow). Dislikes: being alone, the elevator in our building, loud noises.

Although the week has been fun, I don't think it has converted Jon into a dog person. It has also taught me that getting a dog will have to wait until after we own a home with a yard, this apartment-pet thing is for the birds.

Earthquake Madness

A quick note of thanks to all of our friends and family that called and emailed asking about our safety after the disastrous 8.8 earthquake in Chile. Had we been awake, we may have felt the quake, even though it was over 800 miles away. We also were spared the effects of the slightly smaller 6.3 earthquake and it's aftershocks in Salta, Argentina (approx 800 miles away as well). Our thoughts are with the victims of these horrible events.

On a personal note, it just so happens that my brother Chris was finishing his vacation in Hawaii this weekend on his way back from Antarctica. He was woken up at 5:30am by his hotel staff to warn him of the dangers and give him this literature.
We are very lucky that the tsunami warnings ended up not being very serious and that Hawaii was spared from any damage. He is flying home today - and we are hoping for an uneventful, natural-disaster-free remainder of his trip.

Coldplay!

Coldplay's tour brought them to Buenos Aires last night - huge bonus for us! They played at the River soccer stadium in Palermo, an outdoor stadium that looks alot like RFK in Washington, DC. We got tickets with our friends Juan and Sole and planned to meet them for dinner before the concert. Unfortunately for us, our bus got stuck in the worst traffic ever and a 30 minute trip turned into a 1.5 hour marathon bus ride to their house. We skipped dinner and had to run to the concert. We missed all 3 opening bands and got to the concert just in time to swallow a plain hamburger before they started playing. The concert was amazing - we had such a great time! According to Chris Martin, Buenos Aires is their favorite place to play. And I believe him.

It rained for a few minutes at the beginning of the concert, but considering that we virtually ran 1.5 miles to the stadium, it was kind of nice to get cooled off.
Coldplay is awesome for many reasons, but I like them even more now because they gave our copies of a live album as we left the arena. It was like a little present at the end of the night - and I LOVE presents! After the concert we grabbed some much needed dinner at Marshall in Belgrano. We were dying of thirst and pretty hungry, so it was lucky for us the service was quick with regard to drinks. The food was good, I got a Caesar Salad (something that you don't find much around here) and Jon got beef milanesa with mashed potatoes. Overall it was a good meal, with a few hiccups in the service; forgotten dishes, incorrect orders and the waiter went MIA more than once. I would go back but earlier next time, by the time we left dinner it was 1:30am, so I'm thinking that our waiter just needed some sleep.

The adventurous part of the night came when we were trying to get a cab. Even though the concert let out at 11:15pm, the streets were still lined with people looking for rides home when we left dinner. The only empty cab that we could find had a moron driver that tried to rob us by charging over six times the fare that we should have been charged - we didn't take the bait. There have not been many times that we have missed owning a car here, but this night was one of those times. We are lucky enough to have amazing friends here and Juan drove us home at 2:30 am - he was our hero. A very fun, and very long, night - we slept like babies.

Bariloche

This past weekend we took a little trip to an adorable little town called Bariloche. Bariloche is located approx. 2.5 hours southwest (by plane) of Buenos Aires. It's near Chile perfectly situated between the Andes Mountains and a long string of crystal clear lakes. Most of it's tourism comes in the winter (July-August) due to the ski resort, but we decided to go in the summer for a weekend of site-seeing, eating and relaxing.

We stayed at the Tunquelen Hotel which had simple rooms but a beautiful view. The main street in Bariloche stretches from the city center at kilometer 0.0 to the Llau Llau Hotel at km 25. The Tunquelen is located at km 24.5, putting it pretty much at the end of the circuit. (Side note: When researching this trip I was frustrated by the lack of addresses available, because most places are located on this circuit and have km. markers instead of addresses. Good to know for next time.) Here is the view from our balcony on the first (and only cloudy) day we arrived.
After checking into our hotel, we took the bus back to the city center to look around and grab a bite to eat. The downtown area is filled with chocolate shops and log cabin-style buildings. There are plenty of little shops selling handmade wool sweaters and leather items. We stopped at La Esquina (The Corner) for lunch where Jon was overjoyed to have Hungarian Goulash, a dish that his mom made growing up and he could probably eat everyday if given the chance. We had a really great lunch and spent the next couple of hours walking around the town, eating delicious chocolate and shopping. We stopped into two different chocolate shops that both handed out samples as we entered. I liked the second place, La Tourista, best because you could see the workers making each item right in front of you. It was a bit cold and windy that first day so after we had our share of fall weather, we headed back to our hotel for some afternoon coffee and a nap.

That night we walked 5 minutes from our hotel to go to this quaint Italian restaurant called Il Gabbiano. It was adorable, had only 10 tables or so and the entire menu was on a chalkboard. We had a delicious dinner of salmon ravioli and lamb ragout and finished it off with an apple crumble dessert that was amazing. Good day 1.

Day 2: We took a chairlift to the top of a mountain that had some amazing views. It was a beautiful, warm, clear day, so a perfect time for me to get over my fear of heights and make the most of my camera. I'll spare you the details - but here are some pictures that capture the view.
You can tell how we got warmer with time, we each shed about 2 layers of clothing. And then we both got a little sunburnt.
We took the chairlift back down and walked up the street a bit to a cafe called Bread. We sat outside and had a really pretty view of one of the lakes. The name was completely fitting for this place because as it turned out, we had the normal starter basket of bread and then ordered cheese fondue which came with, of course, bread for dipping. It was a carb-filled afternoon. The carbs came in handy a little later when we were riding the bus home and I suggested that we get off at a sweater shop around km. 18. The shop was a bust, and instead of waiting 20 minutes for another bus, I suggested that we walk back to our hotel. Now, if we were set up for a hike, this would have been fine, but we were holding a large camera bag, 2 jackets, a sweatshirt and scarves, it was 75 degrees or so and the walk was all uphill. Oh yeah, and my conversion from km to mile was a little off, I was thinking that it would take 30 minutes to walk home. (6.5 km = 4.03 miles. It was going to take us a little longer than 30 minutes...) Not to mention that we were walking on the shoulder of this windy road, which completely freaked my Exxon-safety-obsessed husband out. It was with good reason, we ended up catching the bus after about 2.5 km, but we did get some great pictures (like the one below) on the way.
That night we ate at El Patacon and for US$65 we each had a drink, an appetizer, a salad, a filet and a venison tenderloin. Amazing. This restaurant was highly recommended by our hotel, which is why we went, although their high selling-point was that Bill Clinton had dined there. They had no idea that this was almost a deal breaker for the restaurant. We're glad we went, it was delicious.

We finished off the weekend with lunch at the Llao Llao Hotel for lunch. This hotel is the talk of the town in Bariloche and if we ever win the lottery we just may go back and stay there. I looked into it and it's somewhere in the ballpark of US$500 per night, so a little outside of our price range. Once we were there we could see why it is such a destination - the hotel is amazing. It has everything you can think of in a hotel including a rental car office in the parking lot. The views are amazing and the service is impeccable. We stopped by before our lunch reservation and the staff was happy to let us sit outside, have a drink and sit in their comfortable deck chairs enjoying the view before our reservation. My kind of place.

We had a nice lunch, the food and service were great. The best part was the view of "Thunder" the only mountain completely covered with snow that was visible from our table.

The whole weekend was relaxing and fun, we had a great time. Bariloche is a great stop if you are looking for a rejuvenating weekend filled with food and site-seeing. Muy bueno.

Che

Ave. Libertador 800 (Recoleta) - After going to a movie we stopped at this great little restaurant called Che. Che is a perfect landing spot for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Our first trip there was for a mid-afternoon snack with coffee. We had a couple empinadas, they were baked (much better than fried in my opinion) and they were all delicious. The service was friendly and prompt. This return trip for dinner was also delicious, we each got a steak, mine with mushroom wine sauce (pictured to the right) and Jon's with peppercorn sauce. I highly recommend getting the mashed potatoes as a side item, they really made the meal. One funny tidbit that we've noticed in our restaurant adventures, places here serve huge cuts of meat, but not a whole lot of side items to go along with it. Generally, you will not get a salad, side or sometimes even a sauce without ordering it specifically.

We received our meals promptly (and I'm not even being sarcastic) at 11:15pm. The restaurant was almost empty when we got there and was just getting busy as we left around midnight. Midnight! We thought we were awesome for eating so late, who is leaving home to go out to dinner at midnight?! Lucky for us, when we got home our friends the Ely's were online and able to Skype with us for an hour or so, I mean really, who can go directly to bed after a meal like that??

**UPDATE** June 4, 2010: At some point this week, Che closed up shop. The restaurant has paper on all the windows and there are no signs or notifications posted. Potentially it's just remodeling, I'll update again if it reopens.