Springtime in BA

Hello all. Happy Obama to you! It's been a beautiful spring in BA. The past few days it's been getting up to 80 at around 9am, but the trees are big and bushy, and the city looks fresh and lively, and completely different than when we arrived. Here's a smattering of stuff from the last month or so...

Here we are with some friends savoring a VEGETARIAN meal at a monthly organic fair. Don't we look happy?
<3 verduras. 

In late-October we said goodbye to our San Telmo apartment. Though our neighborhood was kinda crappy, I think we had 2 of the best restaurants in town right around the corner: Hierba Buena and Caseros. If you ever come to BA go to these places. 50-65 peso lunch ($10) for a ton of delicious, fresh food, wine, dessert, and coffee.  Who's that studly guy eating papas fritas??  Bye-bye San Telmo!!!

*Sidenote: Urban Dictionary's definition of studly: "Someone so handsome beyond comprehension and is very good with the ladies. He is a stud."

Hello Recoleta!  Here's the view from the new apartment. This is a supernice, central part of town, which we were able to move to bc a Williamsport friend's, sister's, husbands, brother's parents live here and are out of town. Score!! We're on the 9th floor.

Moving on, Cutter has had to come to grips with the amount of animal he's eaten in the last three months. This is a ceramic cow outside a brewery, but it's the best we could do in the city.

Oh wait, back to the terraza. Aint it nice?  Dang, we even have an umbrella.

Our old roommates came back to town for the weekend and cooked us an Irish-Argentine breakfast: bife de chorizo, boxty potato pancakes, fried egg, and chimi churri sauce.

In town, some of the lusciousness of spring, mixed with the neato architecture.

We realized that we hadn't really been doing to great wine down here justice with our cheapness, so last week we teamed up with some friends to host an at-home wine tasting.  All Argentine, of course. A rosé cuvee, torrontés, tannat, malbec, cab sav, Patagonian pinot noir, and torrontés dessert wine. A lot of these are from high-altitude Mendoza region. Torrontés is actually native to this part of the world, unlike many of the other grapes, which were brought from Europe.

The bubbly course, lit from behind by...

My bell pepper jack-o-lantern!  Cutter scoffed at the idea, but, by jingo, this is one good looking non-pumpkin. And spooky, no? The wine tasting fell on Halloween, which is not a big holiday here, but is slowly creeping in in the trying-to-sell-useless-Halloween-crap and bar-crawl departments. BTW, the pepper started smelling really great and roasty after about an hour. See the char on the top? Cutter wouldn't let me eat it cause we used a cheap blue candle inside. 

And last, a bit of nature, right in the big city.  This is the Ecological Reserve in Puerto Madero. We rented some bikes and finally took a ride along the river. Surprisingly lovely and quiet.  Many porteños out having picnics, drinking mate, and making out.

I didn't get to take a photo in this direction cause I didn't want to crash my bike, so I stole this one. However, it looked just like this. You're riding along between the city and the river, and you have an amazing view over the grassy marsh to the ultra-modern Puerto Madero skyscrapers. Another must-do if you come to visit. As I said in an early post, one of the coolest things about this city is the variety from one neighborhood to another.  Perfect way to round out our springtime adventures.