Gran Bar Danzon

Located at 1161 Libertad, Recoleta, Gran Bar Danzon is brought to you by the owners of Sucre, a very highly rated restaurant that we have not tried yet. If you didn't know the address, you could easily walk right by, it only has a single door on the street that leads directly to a candle-lit staircase. The atmosphere is very trendy and posh, with low lighting and couches at the entrance. Once past the couches, you can't help but notice their enormous bar that is complete with every liquor you can imagine. The menu is small, but each item is delicately made and delicious. The wine list is impressive, the menu itself needs an index it's so long. They serve unique pastas and meat dishes and a decent selection of sushi. This last visit we took my mom and her friend to Gran Bar during one of their nights in Bs As. I highly recommend the salmon tempura roll, we generally order it as an appetizer, it's served with a chipotle mayonnaise that is spicy and delicious. For this meal I ordered the pork spring that comes with a spicy mango and banana dipping sauce. The spring roll was extremely salty (this coming from a true salt-a-holic) and the pork was stringy. I will go back to the tempura roll for my next visit.

For our entrees, we each ordered something unique. Jon had a beautiful eye of beef with a cheese and corn pudding cake on the side. My Mom had a fresh linguini pasta dish filled with shrimp, tomatoes, fresh basil and sun dried tomatoes. My Mom's friend Pat ordered the most interesting dish of the group of us, the white salmon atop a crab omelette. Each one of us had a great meal, the spring rolls were the only disappointment. All in all, Gran Bar Danzon is a great place to go for a pleasant night out or a special occasion, reservations are recommended but we have walked in on a slow night and been given a table.

Colonia, Uruguay

The first full day of my Mom and her friend Pat's visit we spent in Uruguay. If you are like me, you may have forgotten that Uruguay was a country - but there it is, wedged in between Argentina and Brazil. It is a quick trip from Bs.As., there is a boat service called Busquebus that can take you to and from Colonia or Montevideo, Uruguay for a very reasonable price. Montevideo is a bit known for being the access town for some really nice beaches, but it's a bit further away and you need to take an hour and a half bus ride to the beach after you land so we decided to go to Colonia. There are two "speeds" t0 choose from when buying tickets, the rapido boat which takes one hour and the other boat which takes 3 hours. They run specials during the week, so our tickets were roughly US$82 round trip for the fast boat. The ride is comfortable, clean and has a little cafe with food and drinks on board.



The town of Colonia is quite small, very easily navigated by foot, but we preferred to look around using this sweet ride. We had a blast. We drove 5km up the road on the coast to an area just outside of town where they have some nice beach area. This part of Uruguay is on the Rio La Plata, which is nice but the water comes from the rain forest runoff in Brazil so it is a bit brown. The beach area is nice, there are a few cafes and shops that you can stop at, Pat got a really great horse themed thermos at one of the places we stopped.





We went down to the beach to feel the water, the sand was clean and the beach was pretty much empty so we had the place to ourselves.


We drove up to an old bull fighting ring that is now closed, but the building is really cool. We also saw these little kids on horseback that were having a great time riding with their Dad. When they saw our cameras they came right over to have their pictures taken.

We had a great time in Uruguay, it was a wonderful day, relaxing and calm. I was also excited to add another passport stamp to my growing collection. This is a great day trip, and we will definitely go again with other visitors.

Muchos Perros

You only need to be in Buenos Aires for about 30 seconds to realize that the whole city loves dogs. This is simultaneously my favorite and least favorite thing about the city. I love seeing all of the dogs, in the streets, on the sidewalks, in the park, everywhere you go there are a zillion pups. The down side to this, of course, is the incredible amount of dog excrement left behind on the streets, on the sidewalks, in the park, basically everywhere. It is no small miracle if you spend a week here and don't have to clean off your shoes. At first I was convinced that lazy, inconsiderate dog owners were the source of this issue in the city. I have come to realize that although this is probably part of the issue, the bigger problem stems from one of the city's identifying characteristics, the dog-walkers.

These people walk dogs for a living, and a not-too-shabby living either. They get paid by the dog, by the hour and they definitely maximize their potential. I like dogs and all, but I cannot imagine keeping control of up to 20 dogs even with the intricate leash and pulley system that these people have perfected. The interesting thing to me is that the dogs all seem to get along. I mean, they're walking in really close quarters with all types of breeds, sizes, ages (I'm assuming) and I have yet to see a fight. Some of the walkers seem to have all large or all small pups, but for the most part they have a pretty mixed bag. Not to mention that virtually NONE of the dogs are neutered. I'm assuming very few are spayed as well (not quite as noticeable) so I'm not sure how that all plays out. Back to the problem at hand, when walking this many dogs, there is definitely going to be a dropping or two that goes unnoticed. I'm not even sure how this guy would stop to pick it up - and there are hundreds of walkers just like him. They probably don't even bring bags on their walks.

Regardless, I still love the dogs and the walkers. I have used my super spy skills to capture a few pictures. This has been a 3 month task for me because 1) I feel pretty awkward taking pictures of people on the street and 2) BsAs isn't an extremely dangerous city, but I don't like to take my camera out alone and the dog walkers are all done for the day by the time Jon gets home to go photo hunting with me. Here are a few that I've gotten over the months:

The female dog-walker, a poor example since she looks a little out of control.

The basset hound man.

Your neighborhood friendly dog walker. He even waved for the camera.

Note: My Mom visits today! Hooray! Get ready for lots of touristy trips and tours in the upcoming days!

Castellano Lessons

One of our combined goals while moving down here was to learn Spanish. I have to say that I was secretly excited because learning Spanish was one of those items on my "if I ever have time" to-do list. Well, I have quit my job and moved to a place where I know very few people and a country where everyone speaks Spanish, so now seems like a good time to cross this item off of the list. A note on Spanish, according to wikipedia, the language is called Spanish or Castilian in English, español or castellano in Spanish. According to everyone here, Castellano is the spoken language and in BsAs it's pronounced "cast-a-jaan-o".

One of the enormous benefits to being an expat is that we have the benefit of a company that helps get us settled in this new country. (Side note: I have a new found appreciation for anyone who voluntarily moves abroad and gets everything done on their own. This is a challenge like I can not imagine, my hat is off to you.) Exxon works with a company called S.E.I.P.E. that has a fleet of tutors that the coordinator/owner chooses from to pair with each student. I'm not sure the exact selection process criteria but I would imagine that it includes desired hours per week, location of lessons, and personality style. Jon and I work with different tutors. Jon's tutor works with him two times a week for 1.5 hours per session. He divides it by having one morning session at work and one evening session at our house. I wouldn't say that Jon looks forward to his lessons each week, but he's definitely improving so they are well worth the time.

I work with Irene Samowerskyj (no, that extra "j" is not a typo) three times a week for three hours each. We meet at my apartment, which I was nervous about at first (do I serve food, what if the phone rings, do I want to be with a stranger in my dining room 9 hours a week?!) but she is comfortable, casual and extremely nice. She is a great teacher, and insanely good at languages. She is from Ukraine and speaks Ukrainian, but she also speaks perfect English and she has lived in Argentina for almost her entire life so her daily language is Castellano. Aside from being a great teacher, Irene works as a "host" for tourists that need help translating during their site-seeing. She goes with people shopping or on tours to help them get the most out of their time in the city and ease the language barrier during their stay. She has helped me with muchas mas cosas (many more things - see, I'm getting better!) than a tutor would normally do. Some examples - Dr appointments, retrieving voice mail messages from my Spanish-speaking cellphone, explaining the grocery store checkout line, arranging for newspaper delivery like our new weekly paper, Clarin.


I think it's safe to say that we are both pleased with our lessons, teachers and progress so far. I still get insanely frustrated when I am not able to communicate something, which is a lot of the time, but I'm learning to deal. And we've gotten really good at sign language. If nothing else, it has created something in my and Jon's relationship that we haven't ever experienced before. It's a constant struggle, but you feel each others pain. I mean, what's more bonding than looking stupid in front of each other, then being able to laugh about it later?

Broccolino

We finally tried Broccolino, a restaurant that was recommended to me before we even left the US. This restaurant is interestingly split into two sections, I'm not sure what the difference is, but we went to the location closer to Cordoba. It looked as though the servers were walking between the two locations, they are literally 2 doors away from each other. The red table-clothed tables make the restaurant look great, but they are so close together we actually had to move the table to get our legs underneath. Broccolino has a huge Italian menu to choose from, the recommendation given to me was for the calamari, so I knew we were ordering that for sure. They have 2 calamari options on the menu, regular calamari fritti and calamari Broccolino. We went for the Broccolino and were not disappointed. The dish was battered and fried calamari that was then sauteed in a white wine and shallot sauce. It was delicious.

For entrees, a full two pages of the menu offers your choice of dry or fresh pasta with a number of different sauces and ingredient options. Our table ordered all pasta; I had a tomato sauce dish with olives, artichokes and capers, someone else ordered lasagna and then two people ordered the a spicy pasta dish. We laugh because it's very rare to find a spicy dish here, and not only was it on the menu but they brought a sauce to make the dish "mas picante" if we wanted.

The meal was great, we all really enjoyed the restaurant and will definitely be back. Great recommendation.